Tuesday, December 29, 2015

BEST OF 2015


This Wednesday night, December 30, from 7-10 PM ET, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will lay down three hours of 2015 tracks that rocked our world, from Latina post-punk bands pounding out the jams in Buffalo, New York, to Syrian superstars ululating in exile in Cairo. 


Tuesday, December 22, 2015

LOOKING BACK ON LOOKING BACK IN 2015


This Wednesday, from 7-10 PM ET, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will feature extended listens to the year's top dozen reissues and historical compilations, including the HOLY GRAIL OF ARABIC PUNK FUNK, which just dropped last week.


Monday, December 7, 2015

FARID AL ATRASH | ABDEL HALIM HAFEZ | WARDA


This coming Wednesday, December 9, from 7-10 PM, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will spin three of the greatest live performances ever recorded: 

Farid Al Atrash's soulful "Awaal Hamsah," which opens with some 10 minutes of the most jaw-droppingly amazing oud playing you've ever heard, to say nothing of the superstar's deeply passionate vocal rendering

Abdel Halim Hafez's heart-breaking "Mawood," which includes not only Hafez's hands-down most gut-wrenching vocal turn ever, but some bonus funky fretwork laid down by Arabic music's greatest guitarist, Omar Khorshid

Warda's super-fierce "Ahdounu al-Ayam," one of the Algerian legend's slowest burn live performances, recorded at the height of The Singer of Her Generation's powers.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

RADIO FREEFORM VIETNAM


Join Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio tonight from 7-10 PM ET for three hours of ethnic minority folk, blues, southern theater music, hip hop, soul and jazz from Hà Giang to Ho Chi Minh City.

Listen to the show (starts at 7:00 PM)

Sunday, November 22, 2015

UNTHANKSGIVING


This Wednesday, November 25, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will spin three hours of indigenous artists and the music of cultural and religious minorities from the Americas to Asia, featuring Inuit electronica, Samoan hip hop, Kurdish protest music, Ainu love songs, field recordings from the South American and African rain forests, and more.



Friday, November 13, 2015

THREE TEXANS: ROKY ERICKSON, JANDEK, DANIEL JOHNSTON


On Wednesday, November 18, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio saluted three of the Lone Star State's most beloved artists: Roky Erickson, Jandek, and Daniel Johnston. We heard seminal tracks, rare outtakes, inspired cover versions, collaborations, and live performances all guaranteed to make you feel, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, as if the top of your head were taken off.

Listen to the show now in the archives

Monday, November 9, 2015

UP TO, AND INCLUDING, ASAKAWA MAKI


One of the greatest Japanese singers of the 20th century, Asakawa Maki -- or, simply, Maki  -- got her start singing at U.S. military bases and cabarets in the 1960s. (Honest Jon's has just released a survey of her recordings from the 1970s, with liner notes by Alan Cummings.)

We don't have the Honest Jon's CD yet, but we do have just shy of 20 of Maki's albums. On Wednesday, November 11, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spun a handful of great Maki tracks from our collection in the context of Japanese popular music from the twenties to the sixties, when she began her career. 

Listen to the show now in the archives


Thursday, November 5, 2015

DISCO! DISCO! DISCO! DISCO!


A special show dedicated to my sister, Kelley, featuring extended tracks, remixes, mutant disco, and all manner of funktastic, dance-oriented music from around the world.

Listen to the show now in the archives!


Tuesday, October 27, 2015

FELA, RELOADED


Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio salutes one of the 20th century's greatest artists, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

For three ear-searing hours, we spun rediscovered early recordings, remastered classics, remixes, samples, collaborations, and tracks by long-time associates and progeny.

Listen to the show now in the archives


IMPORTANT NOTE!


October is Crunch Time at WFMU and we need your support! Make a pledge of any amount to WFMU this October and not only will you be a radio hero, but you can also enter your pet into our mascot contest (check out last year's contestants here)! Don't miss out on the new swag, including our Bird Beak T-shirt and Shredding Chipmunk T-shirt!

Friday, October 16, 2015

SINGLES GOING STEADY


From Monday October 19th to Sunday October 25th, most WFMU DJs will be paying tribute to the little records with the (mostly) big holes. Tune in for seven days of seven inch records, as we celebrate our silent fundraiser and mascot contest this October.

Next Wednesday, October 21, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will jump on the Singles Going Steady bandwagon to spin three hours of rare 45s from Accra to Tel Aviv. Special sets devoted to impossible-to-find Japanese flexidiscs from the 1980s, Algerian garage & psych on 7", and postpunk singles from Bangkok to Sydney.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

Sunday, October 4, 2015

THIS ONE GOES TO ELEVEN


On Wednesday, October 7, from 7:00 to 10:00 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU’s Give the Drummer Radio presents:


Mind-blowing vocal performances, ear-melting volume, extremes of speed + length, hyper-rich overlay + collage ... these tracks all go to 11.


IMPORTANT NOTE!


October is Crunch Time at WFMU and we need your support! Make a pledge of any amount to WFMU this October and not only will you be a radio hero, but you can also enter your pet into our mascot contest (check out last year's contestants here)! Don't miss out on the new swag, including our Bird Beak T-shirt and Shredding Chipmunk T-shirt!

Sunday, September 27, 2015

ROCK HASHANAH



On Wednesday, September 30, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spun three hours of  sixties Israeli rockers, Yiddish singers of the early 20th century, Jewish-Arab song treasures from the Maghreb and beyond, and -- far vos nisht? -- for you, we threw in some Bolan, Gainsbourg, and Zorn.

Listen to the show now in the archives!

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

TRUE GRIT


Brash. Funky. Mountain Girls. Ojoobeha. Raw. Scratchy. Xuân Hoạch.

On September 23, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spun some of our gritty favorites, from Algerian 60s nuggets to recently uncovered Indonesian and Iranian psych. 

Move over, Rover, and let the Bodega take over ...

Listen to the show now in the archives


Saturday, September 12, 2015

SUPER☆GROUPS


What's the difference between a supergroup and a SUPER☆GROUP? It's a question we ask ourselves nearly every day here in the Bodega, usually around 3 o'clock, when our energy flags and, hunched over with our elbows on the counter, head in our hands, we drift off into wee, nappy fits of near-sleepage. ... *Snrrrkghhh* Whuzzat?

Oh, hey, I didn't see you come in. How you doin'? Now, uhhh, where was I ...

Oh, yes. The "supergroup" is a popular music ensemble consisting of members who all appeared in earlier bands: Cream; Pigface; The Traveling Wilburys are, by definition, supergroups. There are many supergroups in history -- Wikipedia lists nearly 200 of them, from 1965 to the present, not counting combos assembled for a single concert or album. 

The SUPER☆GROUP, on the other hand, consists of ridiculously talented, visionary musicians, singers and composers, whose output may defy categorization, or around whom whole new genres may flourish. Their members often come and go, starting side projects, solo or in other, equally thrill-inducing, groups. Their music may begin to sag over the years (or decades), but their reputations -- often based on a handful of early, game-changing albums -- never do.

SUPER☆GROUP is the rarer breed. On Wednesday, September 16, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will celebrate our absolute favorites from four corners of the world:

* BOREDOMS. We'll hear rare, early and mid-period experiments from Japan's prescient post-punk deconstructionist outfit; cuts from Yamantaka Eye's previous band, Hanatarash, and Yoshimi P-We's long-running parallel-project OOIOO; and a surprise track from a supergroup proper featuring Boredoms' lead guitar shredder, Seiichi Yamamoto.

* CAN. We'll listen to old faves, lost tapes, Holger Czukay and Damo Suzuki solo projects, and other sweet sonic treats from members of the legendary kraut rock collective.

* OS MUTANTES. Do you live outside the New York City area? Will you for some other reason be missing Brazil's Tropicália-psych trailblazers' September 15 Poisson Rouge appearance? Weep not! We'll spin hits and happy accidents alike, as well as high points from solo outings by Arnaldo Baptista, Rita Lee, and Sérgio Dias.

* NASS EL GHIWANE. In addition to soulful hyper-politicized shaabi selections from the 70s to present, we'll hear solo cuts by the late, great Abderrahmane "Paco" Kirouche and an Omar Sayed star-turn on a Groupe Iâachaken track that will, if you haven't already achieved eternal bliss by this point, send you pirouetting into the heavens.






Thursday, September 10, 2015

54-71 | Six Albums


Six of their terrific albums reupped by special request on Sept 10, 2015, here.




Precise drum and bass guitar like wriggling in the darkness, like a machine 
It seems to go sunk feeling to the bottom to the bottom on and on. 

Snare is fiercely tight. Liked. 

Even so, relentless with drum and accurate+solid dry guitar, dry as a skeleton that did well.

Also air.

Air between every single thickness to the music comes through
To snap up, sound comes suddenly pops out.



Downer acceleration. 

Such as down one step down step spiral staircase 
Poisoning inevitable.

It is a love song? Code of feeling part of the loop other than those pinched
It is great tension anyway.

Songs trimmed to sound that need rather sound you do not need
With guitar chaos skinny enough to not know what you are connected to


Open hi-hat drum is good.

I have hardened as the songs firmly in a medium tempo. 

I like the place to rise a little late.

Monday, September 7, 2015

STRAIGHT OUTTA ...


Inspired by F. Gary Gray's recent N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrated the global hip hop movement, as made manifest from Cochabamba, D.F., and Santiago, to Accra, Jakarta, and Upper Hutt.



Thursday, September 3, 2015

Soap Kills | Complete Discography


 Reupped by special request on September 3, 2015, here.

How can you not love Zeid and Yasmine Hamdan -- who were both born in 1976, but who are not, as I know y'all are thinking, twins? I mean, look at them. If they're not twins, what's with their matching last name, their same year of birth and -- above all -- those groovy velvety black long-sleeved shirt-thingies they're both wearing?


Spurred on by a growing electronic pop movement in Beirut, the duo formed a band in 1997, calling themselves "Soap Kills" because, as Zeid recalls, "We thought that at the time, in the context of Beirut being ... you know, reborn, and all the war being wiped clean, we thought, wow, it's shiny and it's awful and it's soap kills. We thought it would be a nice name for a band."



Both artists went on to pursue solo careers and it's unclear whether or not they have plans to ever reunite. According to their Wikipedia page, Zeid is currently spending time in prison for political sedition (he wrote a song that includes the lyrics "general, go home," an apparent reference to president Michel Suleiman, formerly Commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces) and the entire Soap Kills catalog is banned from radio and television broadcast.

Monday, August 31, 2015

THE ARAB AVANT-GARDE



Taking our cues from four recent reads -- Hisham D Aidi's Rebel Music; Sunaina Maira's Jil Oslo: Palestinian Hip Hop; Daniel J. Gilman's Cairo Pop; and Burkhalter, Dickinson & Harbert's The Arab Avant-Garde -- Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spun 3 hours of ridiculously awesome cutting edge cuts from north Africa to the middle east. 

Thrill to the latest in oriental glam, Egyptronica, spectral microtonalities, musiqa mu'asira, extreme metal, hyperpoliticized polylinguistic hip-hop, electro chaabi and more.

Listen to the show now in the archives

Monday, August 24, 2015

LIVE FROM JERSEY CITY, IT'S ... WFMU!


WFMU's Cheyenne Hohman and a team of volunteers has just finished the heroic task of organizing more than 17,000 music files of live performances at the station ... and on Wednesday, August 26, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio listened to some of our favorite moments.

Catch blistering performances by punks from the Czech Republic and China, rappers from Ghana, Japanese and European avant-gardists, divas from Mauritania, and much, much more!

Listen to the show now in the archives

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

TWILIGHT OF THE DIVAS


Nearly a dozen rare, uncomped, never-before-aired grooves by Iran's Daughter, Googoosh; a set of rollicking rollercoaster riffs by Italy's greatest living belter, Mina; Lata Mangeshkar tracks that will unthread your eyebrows; and more ... a three-hour celebration of a select few of the world's greatest living female pop icons at their most pop icon-y. It's not about you ... it's all about them.

Listen to the show now in the archives

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

CAMBODIA | LAOS | THAILAND


Last week I made one of the single biggest CD discoveries I've ever made -- and I've been bodega diving for nearly two decades. At Thai-Cam Video in Portland, Oregon, I found, in a box that had been scootched beneath shelving and nearly hidden from the eye, more than 50 Cambodian CDs, all from the 1990s. Then add to that the dozen or so Thai and Lao recordings from the 1980s - present I plucked later that week from a couple of Lao groceries outside of Fort Worth, Texas.

Now, on Bodega Pop Live you can hear three hours of super-rare Cambodian synth pop, switched-on Morlam Lao, electronic luk thung from Thailand, and a couple of largely forgotten gems from the 1960s and 70s, most of it never before played on any English-language radio station, not even WFMU.


Monday, July 27, 2015

Ultra Chicks Vols. 1-6


Reupped by reader demand on July 27, 2015, here.

Yes, I've been neglecting the bodega. To make it up to you, how about a genuinely thrilling six volume set of French femme-pop from the 1960s? 

Hear a couple of tracks in Bodega Pop Live's WFMU / Give the Drummer Radio show, here.

RADIODIFFUSION INTERNASIONAAL


In 2005, music collector Stuart Ellis began a hunt for original, rare vinyl from Asia, Africa and the Middle East that would result in two collections (Bollywood Steel Guitar and Pakistan: Instrumental Folk & Pop Songs) and a blog, Radiodiffusion Internasionaal Index, which featured a new single every week from dozens of countries from around world. 

Ellis ceased updating Radiodiffusion in 2013, but the blog remains a favorite destination and resource for DJs, musicians and listeners around the globe.

On Wednesday, July 29, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrated Ellis's work discovering, compiling and contextualizing all of this terrific music with a three-hour mix of our favorite, ear-bending tracks.

Listen to the show now in the archives!

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

THE SOUND OF TOMORROW


On Wednesday, July 22, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrated music performed with electronic instruments. Taking our inspiration from Mark Brend's The Sound of Tomorrow: How Electronic Music Was Smuggled into the Mainstream, we travelled across the world and through time, from 20th century pop and avant-garde experiments on the wire recorder, Moog and theremin to contemporary breakcore, mashups and workstation-driven luk thung.

Listen to the show now in the archives

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

CASSETTE CULTURE


On Wednesday, July 15, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrated Cassette Culture! We explored some of the best -- and strangest -- the medium has to offer, from forgotten post-revolution Iranian songbirds to Japanese and American tape experiments of the 1980s and '90s to obscure Brazilian punk, New Jersey Hardcore and Moroccan rock and roll. 

Listen to the show in the archives

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

SOUNDS FRENCH



On Wednesday, Jun 8, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrated Bastille Day half-a-dozen days early with a three-hour selection of music from la République française. 

Inspired by Jonathyne Briggs' recent book on postwar popular music, SOUNDS FRENCH, we explored early French rock, psychedelic, punk, hip hop from the banlieues, raï from the Algerian diaspora, and choice new tracks from the contemporary French underground.

Listen to the archived show now

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Queens Is King!


TONIGHT, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will serve up three hours of supersonic thrills repping the most diverse ZIP codes on planet Earth, from Bosnian, Greek and Egyptian pop and hip hop to rare Burmese, Pakistani and Ghanian tracks discovered in bodegas from Astoria to Flushing, Jamaica, Lefrak City ... and beyond.

Listen to the show (starts at 7:00 PM)

Friday, June 26, 2015

Sidney | Barima Bii Ba



Hurry! Grab it right now, right here

Uh ... do I even need to ... well ... [cough] ...

YES, Mr. or Ms. Smartypants, the music most certainly DOES live up to that admittedly very, very special cover. You're looking at Sidney, aka Rap Ninja, Ghana's most controversial hiplife artist, a man who recently changed his name, speaking of man, to "Man" ("Barima" means "Man" in Twi). 

This super-delicious offering was plucked from a Ghanian bodega at 96-07 57th Avenue in Lefrak City, Queens. Along with a number of other seriously delightful things that, if you're nice, I'll consider sharing in the days and weeks to come. ...

Thursday, June 25, 2015

E.K.'s Band | Original 1950s-60s recordings


Grab the album here

What can I say? Today, Jesse from Afropop Worldwide, his girlfriend, Hil, and I drove out to see about interviewing Blessing Udeagu, the owner of the eponymous shop where I found most of the Nigerian music I've shared here in the past. While we were there, Blessing's daughter told us about another place to find African music, around the corner, down the street, and a couple of blocks east.

The market -- the name of which I've forgotten, but which was something like Gift Toca -- had a locked wall-mounted display sparsely populated with a few sun-blued CDs ... and then, a few feet away, across the from the checkout counter, a whole table filled with smallish box after box of mostly Ghanian CDs. I bought ... let's say that I now have a verging-on-respectable collection of Ghanian music. Key word "verging," but still.

Take this collection for instance. Holy Effing Expletive. Terrific Ghanian music from the 1950s and '60s. Take a quick listen, if you need aural proof before clickin:


See? Told you. Now, next time I offer up a free Ghanian album and am all like "This is some sweet fine la musica, mon ami," are you going to hesitate before clicking? 

I didn't think so.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

West Africa | Bodega Pop Live



On Wednesday, June 24, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spun three hours of pop, hip hop and traditional music from Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal ... all from CDs recently plucked from the shelves of African bodegas and video stores in Jamaica, Queens and Harlem.

Listen to the show in the archives

Monday, June 22, 2015

Maty Thiam Dogo | Nobel


Grab this terrific Senegalese album from 2004 here.

Maty Thiam Dogo was born in Dakar in 1965 into a fairly musical family. By the time she was 15 she was singing backup with her maternal aunt, Soda Mama Fall. I found this cassette-to-CD transfer of her fourth and last album in a bus terminal video store off 165th Street in Jamaica, Queens, last week while out searching for music and potential interviewees with two guys -- Jesse and Sam -- from Afropop Worldwide

It took us well over an hour to find the video store in question, in large part because everyone we asked -- and we asked people in Jamaican music stores, hair salons, clothing stalls, and cell phone stores -- everyone had a different idea as to where we might find sellers of African tapes and CDs in the neighborhood. 

More about this and similar excursions -- and more booty -- in the days and weeks to come ...


Saturday, June 20, 2015

Sadjo Djolo Kouyate | Sabounyima


Grab this sublime kora-driven album from Guinea-Bissau here.

I've been a very neglectful bodega proprietor the last year and half, and for that I apologize. I can't make any promises moving forward, but certainly my lack of activity here -- other than the occasional re-up and weekly Bodega Pop Live show advertisement -- has been weighing on me. Also, I've gotten out and exploring neighborhoods again, thanks entirely to the fine people at Afropop Worldwide, who are currently putting together a show slated for mid-July about African music in New York City. (More to be revealed closer to the date.)

In other words, I've kind of been picking up a LOT of new music recently. Which may -- and I want to stress that word "may," given my recent history -- may mean a series of new posts over the next couple of months.

So, about today's offering.

I found this cassette-to-CD-transfer at a terrific African movie and CD shop just off 116th Street in Harlem's Little Senegal. The owner, a DJ who I am planning to have on my show sometime in the coming weeks, opened up shop in 2010 and carries a diverse selection of music, from his native Gambia as well as Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Mali, Ghana, Senegal of course, and Jamaica. I am no doubt forgetting several other countries. The music ranges from traditional to reggae to hip hop to straight up pop. He's there 7 days a week, yet still manages to create dozens of his own mixtape CDs (also for sale in the shop) as well as gigging the occasional party, wedding or other community event.

I know nothing about Sadjo Djolo Kouyate, other than the obvious: He's from Guinea-Bissau, he sings and plays the kora, and he's played gigs as far away as London:



I'd offer you a sound sample from the CD itself, but Divshare has changed its policy and now requires you to be a paying user to use their services, including the hosting of MP3s, for which I'd previously relied on them. Oh, well. If you'd like to hear it, grab it. (Caveat: Tracks 2, 3, and 4 are in mono -- in the original recording, the left channel dropped out mid-way through track 2 and reemerged near the end of track 4, so I collapsed the stereo into mono for those three tracks in Audacity. You're welcome.)

And stay tuned ... I've got dozens more CDs from Little Senegal, as well as jaunts out to Jamaica, Queens, and the south Bronx.


Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Noodles | 15 Albums + EPs

NOODLES


15 albums and EPs, nearly 8 hours of Noodles, reupped again on June 17, 2015, by reader request, here.

[Originally published on April 13, 2012.] I'm in an incredibly good mood this evening. Not only did I finish three ridiculously complicated projects this week at work, but I got the final confirmation (date, time and location) of a reading I'll be giving one week from tonight in Washington, D.C., with one of my all-time favorite poets, p. inman.

Although it's the first reading I've given in a year (and you can listen to that previous reading, here, if you scroll down to April 23, 2011), I'm frankly more excited about getting to hear and watch inman than I am about reading any of my own stuff. Inman may not be the most famous poet associated with the Language Writing movement that came into prominence in the 1970s & 80s, but he is certainly the most radical. And, as far as I'm concerned, the finest. He is the Melt Banana of poets. Check out, for instance, this comic I drew in 2009 using his words (and Sugiura Shigeru's images):


Which brings me to tonight's musical offering. As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of Japanese pop and rock (including, yes, Melt Banana). Most of what's on my computer, and thus on my iPhone, is J-pop and J-rock that I either found while on vacation in the archipelago, or downloaded from one of the many Japan-focused music blogs I've been scouring over the last several years.

Without question, my favorite still-active J-rock band would have to be the all-female trio, Noodles. Formed in 1991 in Yokohama, Noodles has clearly drawn the bulk of its inspiration from American bands of the same period, especially post-punk and grunge acts like Nirvana and the Breeders. But they are, IM (not so) HO, more satisfying than either.

Blasphemy? Perhaps. But consider this: Whereas Nirvana collapsed after only a few albums with Cobain's suicide and the Breeders never managed to put together that many more albums, despite none of its members actually having died, Noodles, like the Energizer Bunny before them, keep on going and going ... and going. And, inexplicably, getting better and better ...

No matter what sort of mood I'm in--from "Pretty Okay" to "Utterly Defeated"--it doesn't take more than two or three Noodles tracks to push me up to "Ecstatic," or, at the very least, "Hey! Wow!" I love, love, love, love, love this band, with its Stolen From College Rock Radio hooks and structures and its macaronic lyrics and its obsessively alt-rock-referential titles ("Slits," "New Wave," "Velvet Underground," "Runaways," "Splash," "Lemon Grass Foo Foo").

810 MBs is, admittedly, an almost egregious commitment to ask of you. But, then, ask yourself: Has the Bodega Pop proprietor ever steered you seriously wrong, yet? If you have any love for J-Rock, if the 90s were over far too early for your liking ... give this one a try. You won't regret it.





ISLAND GIRLS


Listen: Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrated women avant-gardists, rockers, folk heroes and rappers from Brunei, Haiti and Iceland to the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.

Listen to the show in the archives

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

RANDOM ACTS | on air now!


TONIGHT from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will spin three hours of rock, soul, hip hop, disco, funk, electronica and pop from the Arusha region of Tanzania to the banlieues of Paris.

Listen to the show and join the conversation!

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

HOW GERMAN IS IT? On air now


LISTENBodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spun three hours worth of popular and forgotten Kabarett, Liedermacher, Ostrock, Volk, Schlager, Neue Deutsche Welle, Hamburger Schule, Eurodance and -- sure, twist our arm -- some of our favorite Krautrock tracks. 

Listen to the show in the archives

Saturday, May 30, 2015

HOW GERMAN IS IT?


On Wednesday, June 3, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio cast our first full-fledged nod to the most populous state in the European Union, die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, or as we like to think of it: the veritable Urheimat of nearly all that is holy and unholy alike from disco, electropop and house to post-punk, post-rock and techno.

We spun popular and forgotten Kabarett, Liedermacher, Ostrock, Volk, Schlager, Neue Deutsche Welle, Hamburger Schule, Eurodance and -- yes, indeed we did -- some of our favorite Krautrock tracks. 

Listen to the show now in the archives

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Spanish Bombs | 7-10 PM tonight!


TONIGHT, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins some of the rockingest bachata, boogaloo, chicha, cumbia, guaguanco, hip-hop, punk, reggaeton y música popular to have ever laser-beamed its way into 0.047" thick discs of polycarbonate plastic.  

Listen to the show [starts at 7:00 PM Eastern Time]

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Phimpha Phonsiri | It's Red!



Listen to the third track


Give track 11 some attention

Reupped  on May 24, 2015, by reader request here.

Have I really never shared this fabulous example of, uh, well ... what is it, exactly? I was going to use Peter Doolan's term, "work station luk thung," but it's not that, exactly. (And, thanks Peter, for the singer and title.) I'm no longer sure where I picked it up, but the most likely place is Thai-Cam Video (5230 Southeast Foster Road, Portland, Ore.), where I got most of my Cambodian and Lao music, and a bit of my Thai stuff as well.

Exhausted and wanting to catch a few quick Zs before heading over to friends' house to watch Project Runway--I baked a nice loaf of rosemary sourdough for them--or I'd stick around and talk longer. Maybe tomorrow; I've got the day off.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

CHINA ROCKS!


Beijing Calling: a 3-hour tour of Chinese punk | post-punk


Turn it up to shíyī!

Saturday, May 16, 2015

BEIJING CALLING


WHAT: Beijing Calling: a 3-hour tour of Chinese punk | post-punk

WHEREBodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio

WHEN: Listen anytime in the archives

WHO:  AV Okubo, Brain Failure, Caffe-in, The Diders, 8 Eye Spy, The Fly, Girl Kill Girl, He Yong, Joyside, Misandao, New Pants, Ourself Beside Me, P.K. 14, Queen Sea Big Shark, Streets Kill Strange Animals, Tongue, Underbaby, Xiao He, ZuoXiao ZuZhou + dozens more

HOW: Listen the show in the archives now!

Guided in part by four defining books on the birth, rise and triumph of Chinese rock and punk (David O'Dell's Inseparable: The Memoirs of an American and the Story of Chinese Punk Rock, Jonathan Campbell's Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll, Matthew Niederhauser's Sound Kapital: Beijing's Music Underground and Jeroen de Kloet's China with a Cut: Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music), we took a three-hour tour from proto-punk forays and the first punk song recorded on the mainland, through highlights of the Maybe Mars and Modern Sky catalogs, to some of the most promising acts emerging in the last couple of years.

Turn it up to shíyī!