Heads Rolled: Revolutionary French Popular Music

Trail-blazing French popular music, from early hip hop and synth pop to psychedelic rock legends Magma (pictured above).

Listen to the show now in the archives

Sorry, but ... this is going to be legendary

21st Century psychedelic rock from the Republic of Korea. 

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Through a Glass Darkly

Music from dark places, dark times, dark emotions, dark situations, dark visions. Featuring the 70s blues of Asakawa Maki, European 80s darkwave, visionary Argentinian experimentation of the 90s and aughts, Spanish riot grrrl of the last half-century, a singular voice exiled from Myanmar, and downtempo sounds from the Middle East and North Africa.

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Tell Me the Truth Before One of Us Dies

Underground sounds from the world's most vertical city

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Audible Empire

The global impact of genre and instrumentation, inspired by Ronald Radano & Tejumola Olaniyan's Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique. Groovy 60s Mando- and Cantopop classics, early African synthpop, Burmese, Arabic, and Ethiopian piano works, and much more.

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Radio Mogadishu

Three hours of heart-stoppingly great balwo, funk, pop, qaraabi, soul and more from Somalia. 

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Mike and Tsoi

Music by Mikhail (Mike) Naumenko and Viktor Tsoi, who led two of Soviet Russia's greatest bands: Zoopark and Kino, respectively.

We spun the songs they're best known for, as well as deep cuts, an early house concert (see pic above), acoustic versions, tribute covers, and more. 

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1966

On Wednesday, May 29, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins three hours of boogaloo, pop, surf, bossa nova, psychedelic, folk, field recordings, ska, and more, all recorded in the year the decade exploded

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Revenge of the Japanese She-Punks 1979-89

Listen to the show now in the archives!

By the time Shonen Knife were passing around the 50 copies of their self-released cassette demo, Everybody Happy (1982), Japanese all-girl and female-fronted acts had already left a series of deep and lasting marks on the archipelago’s punk scene. The short list would have to include Aunt Sally’s pioneering Aunt Sally (1979) and lead singer Phew’s bold leap forward Phew (1981), as well as Plastics’ B52’s-inspired Welcome Plastics (1979), Noise’s brilliantly stripped-down Emperor (1980), Tolerance’s darkly futuristic, proto-EDM Divin and Mizutama Shobodan’s sublime Maiden’s Prayer Da Da Da! (both 1981), and probably the greatest Japanese post-punk record of them all, Saboten’s Floor (1982).

Germany fell in love with Phew—her self-titled debut was engineered by Conny Plank; Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit from Can provided the bounce and beat—and she later collaborated with DAF’s Chrislo Haas, Einstürzende Neubauten’s Alexander Hacke, and Rabotti’s Thomas Stern.

America fell for Shonen Knife: the U.S. release of Burning Farm and Pretty Little Baka Guy were on regular rotation at the San Francisco branch of Tower Records the whole year and change I worked there in the late eighties. I left Tower just before the tribute Every Band Has A Shonen Knife Who Loves Them dropped; I’m guessing it was even more popular among the staff.

From our vantage point back then, Shonen Knife was Japanese punk. No doubt there were a handful of savvy music obsessives flying over the Pacific to hunt down the Vanity Records catalog with Friction and the Stalin blasting through their Walkman headphones. But for most of us, it was Shonen Knife. Because, first, that’s who got picked up here. And, yes, their poetically kooky English-language lyrics were charming. And, in their way, very late eighties.

Throughout the 1980s, Japanese punk proliferated, mutating into its inevitable offshoots (hardcore, new and no wave, minimal synth, post-punk, avant-pop), and women spearheaded several of the decade’s era-defining forces: After Dinner, C. Memi, the Comes, Go-Bangs, G-Schmitt, Kadorie, Katra Turana, Nurse, Rap. That’s just a handful of artists, but a good number compared to the previous decade in Japan, where women were mostly absent among the country’s psychedelic-era history makers. 

What caused the shift? Punk’s D.I.Y. ethos certainly had an impact. The Runaways were big enough in Japan to warrant a 1977 visit; they must have inspired some women to pick up a guitar, drumsticks, or a microphone. Some say it was Shonen Knife’s example that led to a surge in female-forward acts—Naoko and Atsuko showed that women could make their own music, their own way, and become popular overseas doing it. 

But, then, so did Phew.

Tune in this Wednesday, May 21, from 7-10 PM EDT, when Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spins classic, deep, and rare eighties cuts by some four dozen Japanese she-punks.

Listen to the show now in the archives!

Oum Kalthoum & Her Rivals

A celebration of the enduring legacy of Oum Kalthoum with a three-hour throwdown pitting the Voice of Egypt against her biggest competition: Asmahan (pictured above) and Leila Mourad. 

Featuring super-rare tracks and 2 dozen related photographs from the period. 

Listen to the show now in the archives!