New edition of the always outstanding Expressway to Yr Skull podcast from Dynamite Hemorrhage contributing editor Erika Elizabeth is now posted and ready for your download: http://www.expresswaytoyrskull.com/2014/10/playlist-102614.html
Dynamite Hemorrhage fanzine’s contributing editor Erika Elizabeth’s final phony podcast of 2013 is now posted and ready for download. If you haven’t dug into an “Expressway to yr Skull” radio show yet, friend, you haven’t yet lived.
MODERN INTERNET RADIO SUPERSTARS
My best ideas for what to listen to and play on my own radio show/podcast are likely stolen from the curators and tastemakers of today whom I follow and listen to regularly. There are only a few who meet my exacting standards. Let’s meet them.
SECRET MEANING OF THINGS – A way-leftfield dose of 80s postpunk esoterica and 45rpm obscurities from Seattle’s streaming-only Hollow Earth Radio. I believe the DJ’s name is Brittnie Fuller, but she tends to lay pretty low and let her weirdo, “mutant sound” record collection do the talking for her.
WHATEVER HAPPENS NEXT – This one’s a little more difficult to get, since it’s not podcasted (yet), and requires that you listen online to KWTF’s stream on Tuesdays from 10-11pm Pacific. You’ll be glad you did. I’ve known host Chris Selvig since we were both better-looking, and his collection of psych, long avant-rambles, New Zealand noise and African jook jams will get you gazing at your navel and drooling with glee for the hour that it’s on. (Update! He’s started a SoundCloud account and is uploading his shows. DH’s patented passive-aggressive nagging gets results)
STONED OUT OF MY MIND – Whenever I need to know what the rawest, loudest and most gonzoid garage punk and straight-punk records sound like, I head over to this San Diego-based hour-long podcast and allow my ears to bleed profusely. Sure, “Debaser”’s bar for quality punk rock is set a little lower than mine, and at times his back-announcing very much lives up to his show’s name, but I find myself coming back repeatedly. Where else is one to discover The Sleaze and Hank Wood & The Hammerheads?
RIBBON AROUND A BOMB – I get the feeling the DJ La Lengua (pictured) might be running out of steam a little, since she’s only posting her shows once in a coon’s age. Maybe you should download like 30 of them right now and tie up the entire internet for hours, and she’ll get with the program again. It’d be good for you and good for humanity, since this KCSB alum (like me!) has superlative taste in female-fronted punk rock and postpunk, and a deep collection of oddities from around the world. Her on-air schtick is quite fetching and guaranteed to keep you listening for the next wild 45 or comp track from Kleenex, Sin 34 or Rutto.
EXPRESSWAY TO YOUR SKULL – I write about Erika Elizabeth’s show all the time, and she’s now the main other contributor to the forthcoming Dynamite Hemorrhage print ‘zine. So I’ll go light on the praise this time, for once. If you haven’t heard her WMUA show or new podcast, you need to.
If I’m missing any other fantastic shows, won’t you please do me and us all a favor and let me know about them?
The single best music radio show I’ve heard since Mr. John Peel’s reign – or at least since my own – comes to an end tonight. Erika Elizabeth, whom I interviewed here, has been hosting “Expressway To Yr Skull” on Amherst, MA’s WMUA for about eight years now. She’s moving to the Northwest and taking her record collection with her, with the express promise of creating online-only shows on her laptop, which we need to aggressively pressure her to fulfill on if the shows don’t start hitting her website by, say, mid-August – what do you think?
I only discovered the show in 2011, but it really has been a game-changer for me & my ever-evolving rocknroll music tastes. As I wrote when I interviewed her, “Her record collection, and her ability to wield it like a weapon of knowledge and truth on-air, is phenomenal – and it’s all employed at a perfect intersection of deep-underground pop; 70s-80s British DIY and postpunk; 90s shoegaze and twee (stuff from lost 45s and cassettes that no one’s heard for two decades, I’m serious); garage punk; and a lot of noisy girl-helmed bands that had been lost in a patriarchal fog of several decades of disregard.”
Here’s an only partial list of bands I’ve either discovered or positively reevaluated since I started downloading each weekly 2-hour show: The Minders, Submarine Races, Unrest, Lung Leg, The Yummy Fur, The Godrays, My Bloody Valentine, Wilderness Children, Mil Mascaras, Joyride!, Priests, The Moodists, International Strike Force, Golden Starlet, Dear Nora, Blast Off Country Style, Moon Duo, Suburban Reptiles, Dog-Faced Hermans, The Wendy Darlings, Happy Refugees, UV Race, Liechtenstein, The Nixe, The Fizzbombs, Oh-OK, Free Kitten, Petty Crime, Bud & Kathy……and yeah, a lot more.
The final show’s on tonight at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific, and you can listen here. Thanks to Erika for being such a rad tastemaker, and a big fare thee well for the upcoming move.
Just as she did for those of us who donated to WMUA this year because of her rad rocknroll show “Expressway to Your Skull”, disc jockey Erika Elizabeth made a “custom mix” of songs that she’s decided to not just share with donators, but with everyone. I asked her for a collection of female-fronted 90s punk/noise/pop, and I got what I asked for.
I guess for some of those who said simply, “surprise me”, they got the all-covers mix “Reflect What You Are”. And now you get it as well. Maybe you should send her some money if you’re feeling guilty or if you’re a fan of the show like the rest of us in Dynamite Hemorrhage Nation are.
I sort of passed over the 1994 “Starfish” album by the UK’s FAT TULIPS in favor of their earlier singles and EPs, but was reminded of this shredding C-86 style loud pop song the other day when it was played on WMUA’s Expressway To Yr Skull. OK, definitely one stellar track on that album. See if you agree.
Erika Elizabeth played this one last week from THE SIC ALPS on her Expressway to Your Skull radio show on WMUA, and I guess it helped me remember to go back to their 2012 album on Drag City that I didn’t like so much at first. Mea culpa. It’s terrific.
The band, and this track in particular, are mining a nice cross between “Exile on Main Street” Stones and Royal Trux’ mid-period swagger, and despite changing lineups multiple times, they’re still got a hell of a sound, once it sinks in & all.
DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE 