coverville

I have to confess, I’m a sucker for a good CV, as long as they obey a few obvious rules. Number one, they need to deviate as widely as possible from the original. This is why St Etienne’s version of Neil Young’s ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ is sublime, and everything on Robbie Williams; ‘Sing While Your Swinging’ is tosh of the first water. Rule number two; there are some songs that should never be attempted, as the original nailed it so completely that there’s no further room. Exhibit #1, Mick Hucknall’s take on Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’. Actually, I could write a whole book on why every attempt to try and equal the heights so effortlessly scaled by Ella should be erased from the mo=emory of mankind, but now is neither the time or the place. So…

I mentioned I was reviewing this show to a friend, and how it was an interesting concept, a prime example of the kind of format you would never get on terrestrial UK radio. His response?

‘What if you hate cover versions?’

If you subscribe to that side of the argument, then I apologise for wasting your time so far. Because you’re really not going to like ‘Coverville’ at all.

The format is simple. Every show takes a different artist, and plays a load of covers of their tracks, both known and obscure. The presenter, Brian Ibbott, puts the podcast together three times a week from his home in Colorado. It broadcasts on KYCY 1550AM in San Francisco. Although at first a bit gratingly nerdy,  obvious love of the music and a warm, relaxed and engaging style wins the listener over. His determination to cram every last morsel of information into each link is a little wearing at times, but it’s so much better than the usual info-desert that makes up most radio presenters’ blather.

But it’s the music that’s the point of these podcasts. Whether it’s looking at an artist like The Kinks, or occasionally giving a whole album the treatment – as in recent shows where Ibbott takes ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘London Calling’, and plays a cover of each track in the sequence of the original record – it’s the change in the reading of the songs that makes the show work

It’s why Simple Minds manage to remove all trace of thuggish menace from The Stranglers ‘Get A Grip’, while Nouvelle Vague’s version works fantastically. And why the bizarre, auto phoned version of ‘You Really Got Me’ – featuring the sliced up syllables of Tom Baker, no less – is possibly the best cover version, in the world, ever.

Go on, dive under the covers. You don’t know what you’ll find.

All of which come together in his delightful series of podcasts, ‘The Wreckless Eric Radio Show’. Each lasting (approximately) a zippy half hour and recorded at his base in rural France, they contain a fantastic collection of well picked music, some very entertaining opinions on everything from space travel to the Rolling Stones, and the occasional reading from his (very funny) autobiography ‘A Dysfunctional Success’.

Kevin Coyne, The Velvet Underground, Tony Christie, and Parliament/Funkadelic all make appearances, as do more surprising artists such as Donna Summer and Hot Chocolate. Some shows are themed – the Space Travel one is a fantastic listen  – while others just freewheel through the man’s rather fine record collection. Eric’s got an excellent, understated presentation style, and some hilariously dead pan stories about on stage power cuts and appalling promoters, along with a wide range of bizarre spoken word antique radio jingles and ‘How to set up your stereogramme’ records which are judiciously sprinkled throughout.

He would probably run a mile from any such offer, but this is really what a station like 6Music should be doing, providing a platform for a truly original and talented voice. But they’d rather have George Lamb and Craig Charles. It really does make you weep.

There are moments when you only truly arrive somewhere when what you see from your window conspires with the sounds eeking from your transistor.

You know the drill – you’re driving down the motorway and then in a moment of madness you flick to Radio Shropshire, Donegall FM, or the Pulse of West Yorkshire. Accents and adverts suddenly connect you to the area and landscape that your comfy car has kept you insulated from.

This most excellent moment hit me like a piledriver crossing the Orange river – from Sith Ifrica to Namibia.

Two things conjoined to make crossing a tangible moment. The first is that – unlike most land borders, where one despondent cabbage field reaching to the horizon gives way to another – the orange river is a real physical, geographic change. It’s as though God had looked down and said “I’m not leaving this up to those stoopid poeple,” drawn the line across the ground, and said “let there be two different places”. The rocky Mediterranean scrub gives way to Jabba the Hut’s back yard. Luminous sand dunes and desert outcrop stretch from the curb to horizon.

We’d had our passports stamped in the border hut, and were crossing the bridge when, for no discernable reason the stereo which all through the veldt had been happily playing CD’s, decided no more hip hop, you Hafrica now boy.

From the static hiss emerged some weird juju Ndebele dude talking pops clicks and whistles to the sounds of jangly gee-tars recorded in a mud hut with a pair of 1960’s headphones.

Low fi from the beyond.

Awesome.

Say you’d decided that for your staycation this year you were off to the Lake District, Ambleside to be precise.  You’d packed your picnic rug, put the dog in the car & landed up there at some point on a Friday evening.  You check into your b&b and it’s all really green and countrified and you’re really starting to feel like you’re getting away from the grind.  You wake up the next morning and the birds are singing and you think that obviously what you need is a fat fry up to start the day.  You spot the delightful looking Daisy’s Café just over the road, it’s got really pretty net curtains and hanging baskets outside and so you drag the fam over there, walk in the door and WHAM….you’re surrounded by beardy weirdos ravin it up in white gloves to a futuristic soundtrack of Aphex proportions.

This is how I imagine Rob Booth- originally of the West Country via London and now proprietor of said Daisy Café- gets down on a daily basis.  In his spare time away from baking scones & serving Earl Grey to the rambling fraternity of the Lake District, Rob is an underground soldier of a rare variety.  At the last count he’s on the 75th edition of Electronic Explorations (the latest featuring Kid 606), his show that explores some of the most experimental electronic beats & artists that don’t get enough love elsewhere.

Clocking in at two hours, it’s an absolute labour of love on his part- I mean how do you keep in touch with the latest grime techno while chatting to grannies about their dead cats?  The BPM’s rarely drop below 140 and you can expect everything from acid to ragga to minimal tinted tech from the likes of Planet Mu, Rag & Bone and Surface Tension, plus he puts together mini podcasts for the shows and you can either stream them or download the file.  Yeah, ok, his presenting style is more West Country train announcer than hyped up youth vibes, but he loves what he plays and that counts.  His guests (Akira Kiteshi, Optika Technika & Syntheme) represent via mixes throughout the show and this is where it gets really clever.  Not only do they mash together some mad beats- Lee Perry, Girls Aloud & sounds from bearded seals a mile underneath the Arctic, in the latest case- but they also intro all the tracks as they’re coming in, giving us an insight into why they’re there.  Annoying?  You might think so, but it actually works.

There are shows out there that could do this, should do this, but none that succeed in quite the same wonky way and that’s why Electronic Explorations is a winner.  Maybe it’s all that fresh air.  Whatever. If you too would like to witness Rob frantically whipping cream to a mental Milanese-style soundtrack, you can find him here-

Daisy’s Cafe
Ambleside
CUMBRIA
LA22 9BS

Otherwise, just tune into the show and I’m sure you’ll get the picture.

Newbit.

The Breezeblock was a radio show on BBC Radio 1 a few years ago, a mix show for freaks late at night hungry for electronic music. The show featured a bunch of different DJs and producers from Matmos to Bjork, but Jace Clayton AKA DJ Rupture always occupied a very special place in the show’s pantheon of pornographically good knob-twiddlers.  A firm favourite of John Peel, he was The Breezeblock’s daddy.

What Rupture has always done exceptionally well is play stupid music for clever people, and mix it up with clever sounds for those who want it stupid. Sure, a lot of it is electronic with beeps and bass, but he manages to keep a live, analogue, human feel to proceedings that is all his own.

DJ Rupture’s radio show, Mudd Up is available on WFMU and on iTunes as a podcast. If one week’s isn’t enough you can go to his show page where every single show is archived complete with guest information and playlists. Fellow BDAW’s blogger Matt put me on to the show and I can safely say it is the most surprising and rewarding music podcast I currently subscribe to.

Mudd Up! is made with a lot of love. Guests frequently pop up from all continents and disciplines (musicians, poets and more) and the show is full of genuine exclusives. Jace describes his musical sweep as ‘Cumbia. Dubstep. Gangsta synthetics. Sound-art. Maghrebi’, but in reality this is a DJ without respect for fashion, with a thorough disdain of musical genre, audience demographics or conventional broadcasting norms.

Rupture creates sound collages of mystery and drama that consistantly challenge every synapse in my brain. Subscribe immediately.

Saturday Night…
I’ve got a new favourite radio station. It’s called WFMU FM, it broadcasts from East Orange, NJ across the river into NYC. It describes itself as ‘freeform radio’, which means it lets the presenters choose the music they play. Of course, this sometimes results in a load of self indulgent tosh (by which I mean stuff I’m not interested in). However, it also results in some fantastically exciting radio made by obsessed, enthusiastic experts.

Prime among these is the tremendously monikered Mr. Fine Wine. He presents Downtown Soulville, a Friday night sweatbox session of some of the most joyous, uptempo, obscure soul 45’s I’ve (n)ever heard before. Often played off really crackly vinyl, and always chosen with love, the show (and an hour long podcast, in which form it’s become required Saturday evening cookalong soundtrack music chez Hall) just bursts with fantastic stomping instrumentals, unheard of artists crying soulful entreaties, and back catalogue obscurities from artists like Tina Turner and Little Milton. Mr Fine Wine is obviously a soul nut, but not blinkered – one show sees him playing Chuck Berry and reminding listeners afterwards ‘Remember the rule – if I say it’s soul, it’s soul.” To judge by the unlabelled acetate played recently, given to him by his Uncle Maurice, it runs in the family.

If you’ve got even the slightest interest in soul music, you need to hear this show. But before you do, please make sure you’ve got room to move before you start, as rugs will most definitely be cut, moneymakers will be shaken, and midnight oil will be burnt. Terrific.

…and Sunday Morning
And after the late night sinning, comes the early morning redemption. The same station also host a Thursday evening gospel show, Sinner’s Crossroads, hosted by Kevin Nutt. If ever there was a podcast that would make a churchaphobic non-believer feel a little bit sanctified on Sunday morning it’s this (and not the happy clappy inclusive live from a soulless concrete tepee somewhere in the home counties they insist on clogging up Radio 4 with on a Sunday morning).

Beautiful acapella quartets, ranting down home preachers from the earliest days of broadcasting (including brazenly naked instructions for the faithful to send in cold hard cash) and joyous high octane gospel choirs are all pulled out of the archives. They all go to show that, while the devil might have all the best tunes, a bunch of flat topped true believers channelling the holy spirit through the medium of intricate bass parts and call and response harmonies runs him mighty close. Hallelujah!

[