Eastern Roc

This Wednesday, September 14, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will spin three hours of music from half a dozen seminal Eastern Bloc rock groups: Brygada Kryzys, Grazhdanskaya Oborona, Indust-Bag, Pekinška Patka, Phoenix, Plastic People of the Universe, The Rock and Jokes Extempore Band, Sfinx, and Trabant. 

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

Don't Make Us Cry, Daw Mar Mar Aye

TONIGHT, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins three mind-altering hours of music from Myanmar (Burma), much of it from Burmese cassettes -- ranging from traditional vocal and instrumental tracks, to covers that, despite their feigned loyalty to the originals, sound as though they were recorded via funhouse mirror -- none of it previously aired on western radio.

Don't miss this one-of-a-kind broadcast!

Gỗ Lim | Gái Làng

Before her death from lupus in 2012, Nga Nhí fronted popular Vietnamese riot grrrl band Gỗ Lim.

Though they were together for only a year, they recorded one of the greatest albums of the genre, Gái Làng, an angular but sprawling sonic assault with nods to Gang of Four, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fugazi, Bikini Kill, and the more experimental end of Vietnamese hard rock and metal, but ultimately unlike anything before it.

I'm going to open tonight's Bodega Pop Live show with half a dozen tracks from this astonishing, bar-raising, ear-altering album, and I'd love for you to be there to hear it with me.

Bookmark the page and see you at 7:00 PM EDT tonight!

GIRLS TO THE FRONT

On Wednesday, August 31, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins three super-rawkin hours of anarcho-feminists, voodoo queens, bad-mouthed bitches, punk priestesses and riot grrrls from Asunción, Beijing, Cebu, Hà Nội, São Paulo, Singapore and beyond.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

I MIX WHAT I LIKE!

Bodega Pop Live is on the air in half an hour! Join us from 7-10 PM EDT tonight as we spin tracks on wax from Yunnan, Thailand, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, and beyond.

Listen to the show and join the conversation!

GAMES: Rio, Pokémon, Plunderphonics, Kew. Rhone.

This Wednesday, August 10, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrates games of all kinds with three hours of Brazilian hip hop, select tracks from an ongoing Pokémon tribute project, a sample of our favorite moments in plunderphonics, and a generous helping from John Greaves, Peter Blegvad, and Lisa Herman's legendary Kew. Rhone. album (released on Virgin Records the same day as Never Mind the Bollocks). 

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

AMSTERDAM > LONDON

This Wednesday, August 3, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio returns from vacation with a thrill-packed mix of Dutch post-punk, Surinamese pop, South African hip hop, Indonesian rock and qasidah, British punk, jungle, grime and sound collage, and much more plucked from nearly a dozen music stores from Mokum to the Big Smoke.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

Bastille Day

This Wednesday, July 13, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio celebrates Bastille Day with three hours of French favorites and forgottens, from Anisette, C.O.M.A. and Guy Skornik, to Heldon, Lard-Free, and Les Nouveaux Riches.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

Ya Layalit al Eid

This Wednesday, July 6, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio tips our hat to those celebrating Eid el-Fitr with three hours of religious + ecstatic music from Egypt, Indonesia, and Pakistan.

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

OTHER MUSIC

On Wednesday, June 29, from 7-10 PM EDT, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio mourns the passing of one of my favorite record stores, ever, OTHER MUSIC, which closed its doors forever on Saturday, June 25. 

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

While I found most of the CDs I've collected over the last 20 years in immigrant-run bodegas and media stores, I often wound up at Other Music to poke about for things I wasn't going to stumble on in an Algerian meat & hookah shop or Burmese video & dry goods store.

American, British, and French music, yes, but mostly dozens of reissues and compilations of music from all over the world -- I knew I could count on Other Music to have the latest Sublime Frequencies, Dust-to-Digital, or Honest Jon's release, and they never disappointed. 

What's surprising, in retrospect, is all of the imported stuff I found there; last week, it was a mini-treasure trove of Thai hip-hop CDs imported from Thailand. (I have literally scoured every Thai grocery, electronics store, restaurant, and sweets shop from here to Portland looking for Joey Boy's 2004 EP Sorry I'm Happy, but where and when did I finally find it? Last week, Other Music. Yes! *fist pump*)

I was nowhere near the most adventurous nor the most prolific shopper at Other Music, but what I casually picked up over the last two decades has proven essential, thrilling, inspiring, life-affirming listening -- from the first thing I ever bought there, a then-new Raincoats live recording released on CD in 1998, to Alice Bag's debut album, Alice Bag, which I picked up on its official release date, literally yesterday. (Yes, they were still stocking the shelves with new product the day before they closed.)

If you live, or lived in New York, I don't need to tell you what a great place Other Music was. 

Was! God, it hurts to say that. Nothing, likely, will ever replace it. Not here, anyway, or not in Manhattan.

The once mighty Tower Records that occupied the entire block across the street from Other Music is now a Blink Fitness Gym. (I have nothing against gyms; I belong to one. I never go, but I nonetheless proudly belong.) I don't know what Other Music's much smaller space will become in the future -- though my money is on a juice bar. Because God knows when you finish rocking your Blink workout, you are one mother. fucking. parched. bitch.