DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE RADIO PODCAST #19

It's been a few weeks - how about another DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE RADIO PODCAST, what do you say? This is the nineteenth edition (#19), and this time around I've got some stunning new stuff from RUBY PINS, THE AR-KAICS, SIMPLE CIRCUIT, SKINNY GIRL DIET and CONSTANT MONGREL. It's about an hour, all told. The older material includes a lot of daffy, developmentally-delayed rocknroll this time around, including messed-up sideways punk from The Silver, The Panics, Art Phag, The Keggs and The Riptoids. Then there's stuff from Black Flag, SPK, The Bristols, Winterbrief, and Kitchen and the Plastic Spoons, too - so maybe that's more your thing.

Parents may find it somewhat challenging trying to explain this music to children, so please share this with the utmost in caution. There are 18 other episodes to download as well - you'll find those all below the playlist.

Download DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE RADIO PODCAST #19
Stream Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio Podcast #19 on Soundcloud

Playlist:

THE RIPTOIDS - I'm Wired
RUBY PINS - Chariot
THE PLAYTHINGS - Sit Down (Stand Up)
WINTERBRIEF - Love Seat Sofa Charade
BUTTER UTTER - Soho
THE SILVER - Do You Wanna Dance
THE AR-KAICS - She Does Those Things To Me
KEGGS - To Find Out
THE BRISTOLS - The Way I Feel About You
RIGHT ON - Buried Alive
ART PHAG - A Boy and His Gun
JACKKNIFE - Teen Dance Debbie
CONSTANT MONGREL - In The Courts
THE DWARVES - Eat You To Survive
THE PANICS - I Wanna Kill My Mom
SIMPLE CIRCUIT - SOS
THE MINUTEMEN - History Lesson
BLACK FLAG - Clocked In
KITCHEN AND THE PLASTIC SPOONS - Blatta
SPK - No More
THE FUSE! - All Across The World 
ERASE ERRATA - Harvester
NUMBERS - Drunk With Pain
SKINNY GIRL DIET - Homesick

Past Shows:

Dynamite Hemorrhage #18    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #17    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #16    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #15    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #14    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #13    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #12    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #11    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #10    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #9      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #8      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #7      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #6      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #5      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #4      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #3      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #2      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #1      (playlist)

THE COMPLEAT DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE RADIO

I'm usually pretty good at aggressive flogging of my various exploits, but I recognize I haven't ever collected the various links to the Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio Podcast archives and playlists in any one area. If you're just joining us, that's my twice-a-month (or so), hour-long rocknroll radio show, recorded direct-to-laptop and featuring the best in today's and yesterday's young sounds from the realms of artpunk, garage splatter, girl rock and weirdo pop. I started doing them in December of last year, and I still have the gumption to keep doing them even still. Look for another one in a week, or thereabouts.

If you're interested in gathering eighteen hours of music, with all songs personally endorsed by me (albeit with my speaking voice present in each podcast), just click on each link to download the given show. You'll also find links to the playlists, in case you maybe wanna see what you're getting beforehand.

Dynamite Hemorrhage #18    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #17    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #16    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #15    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #14    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #13    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #12    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #11    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #10    (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #9      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #8      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #7      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #6      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #5      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #4      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #3      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #2      (playlist)

Dynamite Hemorrhage #1      (playlist)

"STARLET"

This is an engaging and creative American film from late last year that has all the pace and deliberation of a 70s classic, and the whimsy and complexity of something much more recent. It's easily one of the better micro-independent US films I've seen the past several years. "STARLET" is set in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, an area which typically invokes two quick associations in people not from there: slow-witted, slang-talking "Valley Girls", and the hub of the American pornography industry. Check and check, as far as this film goes.

It stars Dree Hemingway (Dree!), whom I only just today learned is Mariel's daughter and Ernest's great-granddaughter. She's terrific as a bright-eyed, slightly dim LA transplant named Jane from Florida who spends most of her time in impossibly short shorts, walking around the sun-kissed suburban streets and desolate desert-ish landscapes with her little dog. We know that she works, doing something, we're just not sure what that is until about midway through the film. It arrives as something of a shock, though not without some foreshadowing vis-a-vis her two dumber male and female roommates, who are also in the same industry. Jane (working name = Tess) makes hardcore porn look like just another career option among many for young female transplants; you get the sense that she'd just as soon pick up work as a phone solicitor or waitress, if they paid the same amount of money. The film refrains from moralizing about her career choice, her industry, and the people that work in it; it just is, though it's also easy to render independent judgement on the douchebags in the film who attempt to capitalize on young women like Jane.

That out of the way, the porn angle is artfully introduced, and then tossed away, as a way to help you stamp your own judgment to what's ultimately a morality tale and a woman's moral awakening. Jane, perpetually near-broke, finds thousands of dollars within an old thermos she purchases at a yard sale. The old woman, Sadie, who sells her this treasure has no idea what she gave up, but, as we learn, it doesn't really matter. Jane, either out of guilt or a need for an anchoring mother figure or both, goes way out of her way to befriend Sadie and integrate herself deeply into her life. She does this ham-handedly and without subtlety, yet somehow it works, and an unlikely friendship develops. We don't really know what's driving either of these two, and despite some rockiness, it's clear that each fills a gaping need for the other. Only at the end of the film do we get a sense of just what that is for Sadie, and even then, there are loads of relationship and emotional fodder for discussion and dissection afterward.

"STARLET" is streaming on Netflix. Hedonist Jive says check it out.

COMMENCING FOOTBALL DORKERY

Not soccer, but football. In the nine months since my last post on the subject of soccer/football, I have decided to "go native" and celebrate the term football when in conversation about The Beautiful Game, thus striking a stake in the heart of know-nothing Americans who claim that their inferior game is, in fact, football. "Soccer". Pffft. For shame.

And hey, guess what? I'm timing this post to go live at the exact moment that the English Premiere League kicks off its 2013/2014 season. I'm psyched beyond belief, as the frat boys used to say back in the 80s. All the games are going to be live in the USA via the new NBC Sports Network, either on TV or on their mobile apps. Last time we talked about this topic, I was relaying my difficulty in picking an English team to follow that "matched my personality", or whatever. I didn't want a front-runner (Chelsea, Man U, Man City, Arsenal - the big four whom everyone seems to think will be the big four yet again), and I wasn't bold enough to side with a team who'd just been promoted, like last year's Queens Park Rangers (since relegated to the Champions League due to poor EPL performance) or this year's Crystal Palace, Hull City, or Cardiff (who are from some place called Wales that's apparently near England or something). I like underdogs, but how heartbreaking to side with a team that's likely going to get kicked around and slaughtered all year during their one chance in the bigs, before being themselves unceremoniously relegated. 

I took a wacky online test to see which team I should follow, and they told me Sunderland, because I said in the quiz that I thought panthers were cool and because Sunderland is known as "The Black Cats". Next! No, I decided to throw my lot in with a lovable loser, a team that were once on top and are now scraping near bottom but who may be seeing glory days again. The team supported by Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler - to say nothing of prime minister David Cameron. The team that won it all in 1981, a time when I couldn't help but see their name even in the Melody Maker, NME and Sounds music rags I was devouring stateside. A team from Birmingham, a city in which I've never been. Ladies and gentlemen, my new, most favoritest club in all of English football is ASTON VILLA. Look for the awesome purple Villa scarves, shirts and "kits" I'll be wearing all Fall and Winter in support of newly-beloved team.

We're going up today against a tough Arsenal squad, but I think the boys have some fight in 'em, and I wouldn't be surprised if we eke out a hard-fought 0-0 draw, or as the English say, "nil-nil". What could be more exciting? Make sure you stay close to this blog during the entire EPL season for loads of righteous Aston Villa sports talk, perhaps as often as 3-4 posts on that topic, per day. Cheers!

DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE RADIO PODCAST #18

Back with yet another hour-long radio programme, recorded at home on a laptop. We call it Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio. Every few weeks I save a bunch of righteous songs I want you to hear in a file folder on my laptop, then I unleash them upon you in a logical, carefully-curated order, with spoken interludes full of important discographical information and far too much navel-gazing reminiscing to be healthy (or interesting). 

This show, Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio Podcast #18, features some new releases by CONSTANT MONGREL, SKINNY GIRL DIET and the OCCASIONAL FLICKERS, as well as host of underground and obscure releases from the past forty years by The Piranhas (pictured here as they were back in 2000), Deep Wound, Detective Agency, The Wilderness Children, 8 Eyed Spy, Mondo Guano, The Coachwhips, Delmonas, Whitefronts and many more. Songs I like. Songs I want you to like.

Download Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio Podcast #18.
Stream Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio Podcast #18 (on your desktop or mobile).

Track listing:

THE WHITEFRONTS - Get Out Of The House Or I'm Calling The Cops
CONSTANT MONGREL - Under Collar (Little Boys)
THE PIRANHAS - Piranhas Attack
LOUD FAST RULES - Your Clock
FIERY FURNACES - Straight Street
DETECTIVE AGENCY - Smoke A Cig
SKINNY GIRL DIET - Dimethyltyptamine
39 CLOCKS - Psycho Beat
PRESSLER-MORGAN - You're Gonna Watch Me
MONDO GUANO - Deadwood
8 EYED SPY - Motor Oil Shanty
OCCASIONAL FLICKERS - Capitalism Begins At Home
THE WILDERNESS CHILDREN - Plastic Bag From Tescoes
INTERNATIONAL STRIKE FORCE - Just Not Ready
THE PRETENDERS - The Phone Call
THE DELMONAS - Dr. Goldfoot & His Bikini Machine
COME ON - See Me
SUBURBAN REPTILES - 45 Single
THE COACHWHIPS - Couldn't Find Love
DIE KRUEZEN - Conditioned
THE NECROS - Sex Drive
DEEP WOUND - Lou's Anxiety Song
DISSOLVE - Strand

BOOK REVIEW: "ILL FARES THE LAND" by Tony Judt

I'll sheepishly admit that I came back and read this book by historian Tony Judt, after once rejecting it after reading ten pages a year or so ago. Why? Well, I've just become more and more open to the way he looked at the world. Maybe I'm becoming a big boy now. What at first read to me like a jeremiad against my general belief in free markets and creative destruction is, in fact, just that. It's me that's coming around to the fact that my political persuasion in 2013 is not really what it was in 2003 nor 1993.

For years I've proudly worn the "libertarian" lapel pin and flown the free minds/free markets flag in things I've written, in how I've voted and in my pontifications to anyone who might want to know what I think about things (not many, let me tell ya). This past year I decided to take the pin off. I'm no libertarian – or if I am, I'm a totally fraudulent one. I'm just a namby-pamby liberal at the end of the day – no different from you, probably. My last bastion of rebelliousness against gutless conformity hath finally been broken.

I blame Tony Judt. Not entirely because of his final book, "ILL FARES THE LAND", though the ideas within it, which he espoused frequently throughout his books "POSTWAR" and "THINKING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY" have been percolating in my conscience for some time. No, it's due to a dawning mistrust of many actors and authority figures who make up life as we know it these days. The government, "the state", had always been my biggest, and sometimes my only, bugaboo. Until and even after the 2008 recession I had almost undying faith in markets, but my rhetoric and past proclamations to the contrary, I can't say that that's completely true anyone. I've always believed myself to be a "social liberal" on most issues, and for the most part I believe in capitalism as the best system of economic and societal organization ever created. Yet Judt's arguments for a return to many aspects the "social democracies" of FDR-era New Deal America and the postwar governments of Europe sound better now to me than they ever have at any time in my life. I'm willing to consider that the safety net could, and possibly should, be enlarged, and that this might in fact be a net positive for America and like-minded countries like the UK. I'm willing to consider that The State might actually be sometimes considered a guarantor of freedoms, rather than a suffocator of liberty.

Essentially, Judt's book, which was dictated to his assistants as he was sadly dying of ALS several years ago, and then published in 2010, is a small distillation of a core theme in all of his writing: that Western society was at its best in the postwar era of 1945-1980, and saw unprecedented advances in opportunity, equality, rights and wealth during these years. Judt believes in no uncertain terms that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan put the brakes on this, and pandered to humanity's more base instincts in the pursuit of profit for some at the expense of the many. This has led to an atomization of society and a painful inequality that we're still reeling under, in his telling, and a shredded safety net that leaves society's most vulnerable scared, sick and unable to advance in their own lifetimes. I'm not being unfair in stating his positions as being this starkly black and white, because that's exactly what they are. Pre-1980 = good; Post-1980 = bad.

There are many things I find preposterous and wrong in the way Judt writes about the post-social democracy years. This is a guy who is more reactionary than any 1980s conservative, except he's looking nostalgically backward at the State-managed utopias of the 50s and 60s, rather than at the "family morals" of that era. Judt overreaches greatly, and celebrates a made-up world in which we all had a unity of purpose and enjoyed being under the benevolent hand of the US or UK or Swedish government, up to and including a call for a return to a pre-automobile era in which we all crowded together on buses. Judt fails to recognize that capitalism and how people define themselves vis-a-vis The State are always evolving and changing, and that what worked in 1955 needs to also be informed by the knowledge of what worked in 1980, 1994 and in 2013 – and that knowledge includes why the people of England elected Thatcher three times and the people of the US elected Ronald Reagan twice (three times as well, if you count the first George Bush). We didn't just become stupefied and lame in 1980 – Judt's social democracies, as currently constituted, were choking under the economic dead weight of what they had wrought.

It's the sort of government-knows-best moralism that I can't stand. Judt also seems to forget that humanity is made up of widely varying levels of intelligence, and that, unfortunately, there really is and will always be a natural stratification of humanity along intelligence lines. That said – moralism is the main reason I recommend this book. Judt is at his best when he encourages readers to consider political views as having an intensely moral component. Not, "Will this proposed policy fit my political views?", but "Is this policy the right and moral thing to do for the most number of people?". Health care is a perfect example. The social democracies, with the exception of the US, enacted state-controlled policies of health care that certainly have their flaws, but that also ensure that health care is a "right" that is effectively free and inalienable, provided in exchange for consent to a higher rate of taxation. Was this the right thing to do? Talk to a Canadian, or a Brit, or a Swede. Ask them if they'd like to switch to the United States' model of health care. I've yet to find one that would.

There is a moral dimension in extolling the profit motive above all else, and I'm getting tired of defending the latter (to myself, especially). I'm a guy who went and got an MBA in the 1990s (instead of the poverty-making Masters in English Literature that I really wanted), and one that finds much to admire about American business. Even back then, though, I had my doubts about many aspects of modern capitalism as practiced. I think that the way public companies are run in the United States is a big problem (short-term profits and stock market gains driving short-term, profit-above-all-else behavior – which is not healthy for a company long-term, nor for the society it sits in). I'm fed up with the complicated ties between government and banks and Wall Street; for instance, I would greatly prefer a simple set of well-understood rules for, say, mortgages – like, "all borrowers need to put 20% down before they can buy a house" - and Fannie & Freddie and the complicated hedge schemes and derivatives can die out. I, like Judt, would like to see a safety net that successfully eliminates poverty, squalor and need in the richest country on earth. I even can see some sense in the arguments for publicly-funded broadcasting, where I saw only stupidity before. His book, along with my observations of the world since 2008, has me adjusting my first principles a bit, and I think that's a good thing.

If anything, I'll work to incorporate a more moral dimension into how I think about spending, regulation and taxation issues. I was already a libertarian apostate on guns (I hate 'em) and on some criminal justice issues (I'm actually a bit of a right-wing nut when it comes to locking up violent criminals). I think the mark of a healthy society is one that looks at what's worked in the past, what's working now and what's broken, and continually readjusts to fit present realities. If that means that we address certain aspects of modern life with state-run solutions that private enterprise isn't effectively tackling, then so be it. (I also still very much believe in the opposite – like, say, the post office). I may not pine for a pure State-run social democracy a la Sweden in the 60s, but I'm willing to consider that there's a reason it worked for the Swedish people at the time, and that they've retained elements of it fifty years later out of choice and because it works. This, for me, is progress, if you want to call it that. Thanks to Tony Judt and his infuriating little book for helping me along the path.

"NIGHT MOVES"

As I've spouted about before on this blog, and in a lot of the online and offline writing I've engaged in over the last 25 years, I came of age totally marinated in, and obsessed with, 1970s film. Most of my favorite movies came from that decade (many of which were viewed on our awesome 70s early-cable film station "The G Channel" in the late 70s) and I'm trying to plug all of the holes in my 70s film "resume" before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Long on my "list", as it were, is Arthur Penn's 1975 film "NIGHT MOVES", which I've been told multiple times in no uncertain terms is one of the best films of its era. (It also figured in this recent book I read, which helped prod me to finally rent it). While I did in fact finally get around to renting it, and enjoyed it just fine, I might also offer the heretical opinion that it's a decidedly second-tier 70s film and even a bit derivative. Ahem. 

"NIGHT MOVES" is a showcase for Gene Hackman, and like Robert Altman's Philip Marlowe in 1973's "The Long Goodbye", he's a low-rent, oddball detective who figures in just about every scene in the film. Hackman gets called to investigate a missing sexpot teenage daughter by her mother, a wealthy, faded Hollywood actress right out of central casting. Meanwhile, with his own marriage unraveling, he finds that the trail to and beyond the daughter (played by a young Melanie Griffith, and whom he finds and apprehends pretty quickly) grows more confusing and shadowy the deeper he digs. Because he's in a bit of a hard place himself, vis-a-vis his wife, he gets hooked into this case and finds that he's biting off a lot more than he can chew. Like Penn's classic "Bonnie & Clyde", this too has a bad ending, full of carnage and not a whole lot of redemption and learning. Very 70s, very bleak and pretty satisfying as it goes.

I thought Hackman was great, and the strange performance put in by Jennifer Warren as Paula (what a nutball!) is terrific. Yet I don't feel this film is strong enough to capture the "zeitgeist" of anything well. Marital relations? Other films of this era show disintegrating marriages far better. As a weirdo noir, which it really is, more or less, I'd take the earlier "Long Goodbye" any day - that film too even has a crusty old boozer and his strange wife, just as this one does, to go along with the frustrated, just-getting-by detective. I guess when this film starts closing in on its ending orgy of violence and pathos, I felt like I'd kind of seen films that unfolded and closed in exactly this manner already. Seeing "Night Moves" felt more like "checking the box" than I wanted it to. Perhaps you should tell me why I'm wrong in the comments, if you're so inclined.

"BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME"

I know that BIG STAR, the critically-acclaimed and posthumously-loved Memphis band of the early 70s, didn't really start finding any semblance of an audience until the mid-1980s - as this new documentary about them, "BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME", makes clear. Although I was a massive underground teenage and then twentysomething rocknroll fan throughout the 80s, I never actually "discovered" the band myself until 1993, while touring with the band Claw Hammer as road manager. They had a tape of "Radio City", the band's second album, which we listened to frequently across North America. I was awestruck by the thing. Every song was phenomenal; the sequencing was perfect; Alex Chilton's voice was both angelic & Southern rocknroll god at the same time; and I couldn't get over that rough-hewn but clean guitar sound on tracks like "September Gurls" and "Mod Lang". I've subsequently called "September Gurls" the single greatest song of the 70s, and I think I can still stand behind that assertion.

My problem in the 80s was apparently the same problem they were having in the 70s - they weren't "heavy" enough for me (or their era); that, and some pretty stupendous bad timing and record distribution problems, helped ensure that their three excellent records never found a true audience until long after they'd packed it in. "NOTHING CAN HURT ME" is your pretty standard music documentary, well-told and extremely interesting to me (as a fan); it's hard to say how compelling it would be for the non-fan. There are no drug nor drinking tales, save for a few quick party shots from a William Eggleston film from 70s Memphis called "Stranded in Canton" that I need to see. (And who knew that the #1 party spot in Memphis back then was the original T.G.I. Fridays?). The sad tale of founder and first-album guitarist Chris Bell is threaded throughout the film, with interviews with his surviving siblings and loads of photographs of a pensive and moody-looking Bell shown over and over again. I have a better appreciation for him now than I did previously; it's clear that he showed Alex Chilton a great deal in terms of sound structure, production and "feel". It's also a huge tribute to Chilton and bandmates Jody Stephens and Alex Hummel that they actually improved upon Bell's formula for that second record, "Radio City". It truly is a goddamn crime that this record is still unknown to too many people.

One of the great weirdo mysteries of rock and roll is Alex Chilton, post-Big Star. He went from near-perfection and studio mastery in Big Star to a ramshackle, half-baked and totally bewitchingly cool solo career in the late 70s, where he played like a man who didn't give two shits about anyone or anything. The footage of him playing with Tav Falco's Panther Burns on Memphis morning TV is priceless, along with some early Cramps studio footage (Chilton presciently embraced and produced the band); I wish they'd spent a little bit more time on "Like Flies on Sherbert", his crude and slipshod 1979 album that is a stone classic for some and a complete disaster to others. But hey, it's a Big Star movie, not a Chilton film, and unfortunately, it was made after he passed away in 2010.

We do get to see many interviews with survivors from the early Memphis 70s, including both Stephens and Hummel (who died while the film was being made) and various producers, studio heads, rock critics and promoters who were baffled by the band's lack of commercial success. It's a good yarn, truly. It follows rock-doc form and function quite well without dipping into cheap sentimentality nor shocking band antics; I very much admire the respect paid to the musicians and the music by directors Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori. And with a rousing "outro" of "September Gurls" included as the credits roll, you really can't go wrong.

OTHERWORLDLY AND GONE #2 - SONGS OF HOME, POEMS OF TRUTH

Now available for streaming and download - the second edition of the OTHERWORLDLY AND GONE 78rpm podcast, featuring an amazing bevy of lost ethnic music from the 20th century, brought back to life by heroic curators and collectors. A full playlist is below. This one includes selections from brand-new releases on Canary Records and Dust-to-Digital, with an intense focus on Greece in the first half and on Africa in the second, with a little Bulgaria, Mexico, Turkey, Morocco and elsewhere in the mix as well.

It clocks in at eight minutes past an hour, and if you’re like me you’ll find it to be an edifying and intense 68 minutes. Feel free to follow Otherworldly and Gone on Twitter and on Facebook if you enjoy this one; the first edition is available to stream and download right here as well.

Download OTHERWORLDLY AND GONE #2 – Songs of Home, Poems of Truth

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.
Stream or download the podcast on Soundcloud.
Stream the podcast on Stitcher.

Playlist

1.     RITA ABATZI – Xanthi Ke Mavromata (Blonde Jewish Girl) - from the forthcoming LP, “I’m Burning, I’m Burning" on Canary Records
2.     LYDIA MENDOZA – Palida Luna – taken from the Mississippi LP compilation, “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore"
3.     VERA FILIPOVA – Kiradjiche Jabandjiche – available as an “Uncollected Song" on the Canary Records USB thumb drive, which you can order here.
4.     SPYROS PERISTERIS – Dertilidiko – from the new Dust-To-Digital 2xCD box, “Greek Rhapsody"
5.     SOTIRIA BELLOU/STELLAKIS PERPINIADES – Lady From Peiraias – from a collection of Sotiria Bellou’s recordings called “Apopse Kaneis Bam: Original Rebetika"
6.     FIVE GLINIOTES – E Vlaha (A Vlach Girl Washing By The River) - from the new 2013 LP collection, “Five Days Married and Other Laments" on Angry Mom Records.
7.     ORKIESTRA MAJKUTA – Wsciekla Polka (Wild Polka) - taken from Canary Records’ excellent LP collection of Eastern European immigrant music, “The Widow’s Joy".
8.     MITA STOICHEVA – Stori Se Horo Golyamo – from a 4xCD box on JSP Records called “Outsinging The Nightingale: Lost Treasures of Bulgarian Music"
9.     JACOB HOFFMAN & KENDAL’S ORCHESTRA – Dinoa & Hora – taken from the Mississippi LP compilation, “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore"
10. ZOUTPANSBERG BROTHERS - Hosi Yehina Masia – extracted from “The Secret Museum of Mankind – East Africa" CD collection
11. MOZMAR CAIRE ORCHESTRA – Raks Baladi Hag Ibahim (Country Dance) - my apologies for the CD’s skips on this song. I obviously have a heretofore-unknown scratch on my “Victrola Favorites" 2xCD collection on Dust-to-Digital.
12. FAHRIYE HANIM – Al Yanakdan Disledim (I Bit Her On Her Red Cheek) - from a brand-new Canary Records LP compilation, “Canaries and Nightingales".
13. MASTER VYAS – Jala-Tarang – from “The Secret Museum of Mankind, Volume 5" CD collection on Yazoo Records.
14. VIRGEM DE MOCAMBIQUE – Nwamakuladzumba – downloaded from the Excavated Shellac blog, May 15th 2013 post.
15. NGOC BAO– Co tu  – downloaded from the Ceints de Bakelite blog, July 6th 2013 post.
16. ABDELLAH EL MAGANA – Kassidat el Hakka (The Poem of the Truth) - from the 2013 LP collection of Moroccan 45s, “Kassidat", on Dust-to-Digital.

A FEW MOTEL POSTCARDS I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE

Feel free to come check out these and many others from my awesome motel postcard collection on my blog The Postcard Motel.

 

 

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: "ANIMAL FARM" by George Orwell

Yeah, I know you read it in high school. I'm not precisely certain how I made it through an AP English program, an undergraduate degree in English literature and 24 intervening years without ever having read George Orwell's "ANIMAL FARM". It's ever-more baffling when I consider how mind-blowing "1984" was for me when I read it at age 15. I instantly announced it as my "favorite book of all time", passing up Steven King's "The Stand" at that point in my life. It's still one of my favorites. So anyway, I got around to reading "Animal Farm" this year, and I'm the better for it, as I'm sure you were when you first observed a barnyard full of English countryside animals acting out the full passion play of Soviet Communism. It's a lacerating critique of totalitarianism that chokes Communism with its own idealistic idiocy and out-and-out lies, while even saving up a teeny tiny bit of spite for the capitalist as well.

Orwell's novela taught many impressionable youth over the years to keep from naively buying into utopianism and to question the motives of authority. Naturally, readers of all political persuasions can read whatever fits their agenda into this simple tale. Yet it's without question that "Animal Farm" pillories the rise and the corruption of Soviet Communism – if, indeed, a corrupt ideology could be corrupted – by choosing perfectly-rendered (and by necessity, simplified) Marx, Stalin and Trotsky characters for his narrative. They're all pigs! I loved "Old Master" (Marx)'s call-to-arms speech that kicks off the book, as well as the rallying song that came to him in a dream, "Beasts of England", which is, of course, "The Intenationale". Moreover, his non-totalitarian allegorical animals are fun and instructive to behold. There's Molly, the proud, vain and individualistic horse who sees her vanity and individualism being crushed by collectivist propaganda and demeaning regression to the mean – and therefore runs off to live on a "capitalist" farm. There's the oafish horse Boxer, who symbolizes the obedient and ultimately betrayed Russian working class. And my favorite is the propaganda master Squealer, who is Napoleon/Stalin's right-hand man who convinces and cajoles the various doubting animals into continuing to render themselves unto the Communist cause, even as they starve, are lied to and are worked to near-death.

It would have been eye-opening to read and especially to debate this in 1983 in my high school English class, I can tell you that. Reagan was president, the Russians were the enemy, and "Red Dawn" was one of the most popular movies in America. Still, it has much to teach both the youth and the fortysomethings of today, and it's so well-written and entertaining that I'm certain it won't end up being regarded as a relic of the 20th century. 5 stars out of 5 from The Hedonist Jive.

DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE RADIO PODCAST #17

It lives! I thought after my last fiasco of a show that the people might revolt and I'd be asked to stop doing these hour-long phony radio show podcasts, but no, turns out several dozen of you liked that one and I've presumptively assumed that you'd like me to keep going. So here's DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE RADIO PODCAST #17, this time 1 hour, 11 minutes of wiry punk, aggressive pop stomp, razorburn instrumental surf music and some loopy early 80s UK DIY that was (perhaps) lost to time until today. I think you're going to find a song or two you like in this batch, some of which came from a pile of 45s I turned into digital tracks just last night.

Bands span the quality and fame gamut from The Au Pairs to Subverse, from Submarine Races to The Titans, from The Great Unwashed to the Axel Grinders, and even from The Wailers to Blunder Tongue. Download it, stream it, and as always – make sure you tell all of your pals about it.

Download DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE RADIO PODCAST #17
Stream DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE RADIO PODCAST #17 on Mixcloud

Track listing:

SUBMARINE RACES – Wire Taps
SKINNY GIRL DIET – Eyes That Paralyze
HOT MACHINES – Tear It Apart
STEREO TOTAL – I Love You Ono
RADIO BEATS – Backseat Learnin’
THE CHEIFS – Knocked Out
THE EASYBEATS – Sorry
FRENCH KISSING – I Want More
THE GREAT UNWASHED – Bad News For Jesus
AXEL GRINDERS – Apparatus of Love
DIE SWEETLES – Die Schule Ist Aus
THE TITANS – Speed Queen Mama
RUST – Shameless Thieves
SKINNED TEEN – Secrets
MIL MASCARAS – Mushroom
THE ZOOMERS – Walking
SUBVERSE – Chance Romance
AU PAIRS – Set Up
TIKI MEN – Swingin’ Creeper
THE WAILERS – Mashi
BLUNDER TONGUE – Third Brown Eye

THE HEDONIST JIVE'S VERY IMPORTANT 2013 MIDSEASON BASEBALL UPDATE

It was late March, 2013. A middle-aged man residing in San Francisco, California sat down at his computer to graciously provide the good people of the world with a forecast of the Major League Baseball season that was soon to come. This man, only just a mortal man, and no prophet, believed in things – nay, could see things. Perhaps, as is surely apparent now, this man could in fact see things that others could not. This man looked at all the conventional wisdom of his day, and while absorbing some and discarding much, made bold prognostications that were devastatingly prescient, while being stupendously unconventional. The man picked the Boston Red Sox to win their division, the most difficult division in baseball – for instance. That baseball team is now in first place in that division. This same man believed in the Atlanta Braves, a team beloved by no man in March 2013, and a team currently in first place in their division as well. It is no mere accident that I know so much about this man and his ways, my friends – for I am that man.

Oh right, what about those Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, or the San Francisco Giants? Yeah well, what are you gonna do, right? It's baseball! I've been basking in the first half of the 2013 season, and, with its resumption today after the All-Star break layoff, I thought I'd offer up a few thoughts and observations for you to take with you through the end of the season:

• Sports Illustrated recalibrated their World Series predictions in their new issue, so I guess that gives the rest of us license to do the same. They have St. Louis beating Texas at the end. I'll stick with my World Champions-to-be the Atlanta Braves, this time beating the Detroit Tigers in 7 games instead of beating the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles, who will miss the playoffs and suffer an offseason of acrimony, finger-pointing and bitter recrimination.

• Like you, I'm loving the Pittsburgh Pirates story. For a big part of my youth, they were a dominant team, but the last time they were any good, we were all 21 years younger. I had thought that the big surprise story this year would be the Kansas City Royals, and in some quarters, it's a big surprise that they're not contending. A little piece of every baseball fan will die if the Pirates collapse in the second half, and don't at least finish with their dignity intact and their first winning record since 1992. Is that too much to ask?

• My San Francisco Giants, currently 8 games under .500 and yet only 6.5 games out of first place, will do one of two dramatic things in the next 3 months, all without making the playoffs. I'd give them about a 60% chance to actually have a worse second half, and to get to a "rebuilding" mindset about 6 weeks from now, if not sooner. As baseball becomes a sport of prospects in their 20s, as opposed to a sport of expensive free agents in their 30s, look for the Giants to embrace the new trend and start selling off parts (Pence, Lincecum, Romo and so on) in favor of stocking the farm. Then again – there's a 40% chance they start playing really, really well, far better than their mostly-abysmal first half, just enough to contend for second place or a strong third, and call it an odd-year aberration on the way to their third straight even-year World Championship in 2014.

• I'm also looking forward to the Great Steroid Bust of 2013. Any day now, Major League Baseball is going to announce who's in trouble from the Biogenesis scandal. Clowns like A-Rod and Ryan Braun will be suspended, most likely for a long time, and even their own union has proactively announced that it won't defend them. It's clear that the players, the grand majority, are looking to move on from this story and the taint that comes from it on their own steroid-free performances. Who among us isn't looking askance at Chris Davis, rightly or wrongly, for instance? I'd like for this whole thing to be gone, with the dopers swept out for good and playing field metaphorically leveled again.

• Can the Oakland A's keep playing this well? Man, I hope so. I've actually been to more A's games this year than Giants games, and all of a sudden it's just a fantastic atmosphere over there in the disgusting, decrepit Oakland Coliseum. I haven't seen such excitement and fan unity & cohesion since the BillyBall days. They're a fun team with what appears to be a terrific set of individuals for the second year in a row, and my dream Series is them vs. the Pirates this October.

• Hedonist Jive's favorite ballplayers, as of July 2013, in no particular order (see my 2010 list here – it's funny to see how many of those guys are out of baseball, on different teams, or just flat-out stink now): Andrew McCutchen, Pablo Sandoval, Paul Goldschmidt, Mike Trout, Freddie Freeman, Jacoby Ellsbury, Alex Gordon, Yoenis Cespedes, Aroldis Chapman, Chris Sale, Yu Darvish, Shelby Miller, Madison Bumgarner, Tim Hudson, Craig Kimbrel, Grant Balfour. Why? I don't know. I like these guys, the way they play the game and stuff.

See you at the end of the season, when we do our annual post-mortem and hand out some hardware!

BOOK REVIEW: "IRON CURTAIN – THE CRUSHING OF EASTERN EUROPE 1944-1956" by Anne Applebaum

If one were to opine, say, that Communism was one of the "worst ideas of all time", I'd have a hard time countering that statement with a well-formed and persuasive argument to what is nearly a truism at this point. If one were to hone that opinion a bit and say that "Soviet-style Communism", the kind exported to Eastern Europe after World War II, was one of the, if not the worst idea of all time, I'd probably stand up and cheer. Communism's preposterous, dangerous, utopian fantasies on the nature of man, as well as how these command-and-control totalitarian ideas actually played out, were responsible for untold death, misery and suffering in the 20th century, on a global scale that dwarfs even the Nazis' atrocities. It's an irony of history to look back and realize that it was Hitler's stupidity and European domination fantasies that paved the way for the Soviet Union's decades-long crushing of those same countries. One or the other was probably bound to control Eastern Europe in the 1940s, and Jewish residents notwithstanding, it's hard to say under whose boot life would have been worse.

Anne Applebaum is a Sovietologist and writer of the highest order. Her massive book "GULAG: A HISTORY" is the definitive study of the Soviet gulag prison system, though I'll admit its breadth and massiveness is what's kept me from actually reading it (so far). For those weirdos among us who delight in histories of postwar realignments, retributions and the birth of the Cold War, the arrival of her "IRON CURTAIN: THE CRUSHING OF EASTERN EUROPE 1944-1956" late in 2012 was a cause for celebration. I made a decision to dig deep within myself and get through this large tome, and thanks to Audible.com and my long daily commute, I did so. It was a pleasure to "read" it, and it certainly stiffened my spine with regard to my distaste for Communism and for much of the sordid, depressing 20th century.

Applebaum is an excellent relayer of history, and she uses both primary and secondary source material to advance many personal stories of life under Soviet rule in the countries of Poland, Hungary and East Germany during the 11 years following World War II. She chooses those years because 1956, where the book ends, is the year that is popularly recognized as the first true, crushed anti-Soviet rebellion (in Hungary, and to a lesser extent in Poland). She chooses those 3 countries because, well, there were far better and more cohesive-to-a-theme stories there, than if she'd chosen, say, Yugoslavia (in which Tito carved out a repressive and murderous yet anti-Stalin path) or Albania (now where is that again?). Her style is deft, light and non-ponderous, and she does a great job weaving straight history and intense personal stories into several big chapter-long "subjects".

These subjects, all facets of the Soviets' command-and-control crushing of all spheres of Eastern European civil and economic life, are explained in illuminating but rarely boring detail in each chapter. Examples include "Youth" - how the Soviets co-opted or banned existing youth organizations, like scouts, as part of their paranoid desire to eliminate all traces of activity outside of those that glorified Stalin and the goals of Communism. Another chapter is on the ludicrous show trials, with their forced public confessions; another on entertainment (the Soviets actually cracked down mightily on Polish hepcats who danced to American jazz); another on heinous economic blundering via collectivization schemes, and so on.

What's clear is that in the post-WWII chaos, the only thing that was certain is that the Red Army was in these countries, and that they were putatively in charge. How things were actually going to play out was not exactly known, but the Soviets knew. They started a campaign of looting, plundering and then mass arrests that established both their domination and their ruthlessness, all the while lying to the Americans and British about the free societies they would be overseeing. Elections were in fact held in these countries, and for the first few postwar years, they were somewhat free. Yet they didn't quite go the way Mother Russia wanted them to – too many social democrats or "light" Communists, not enough "Little Stalins" to kowtow to Stalin – and they were essentially vetoed in time, via arrests, terror and wholesale changes in election laws until the right people were in charge.

This ugly period was followed by a worse one, "high Stalinism", the years in which Eastern European countries suffered a complete dismantling of their former selves. Lasting until Stalin's death in 1953 and Kruschev's "secret speech" that followed, it is the societal vision that provided the fodder for George Orwell's 1949 classic "1984". One thing Applebaum illuminates extremely well in this book is the importance of civil society – voluntary organizations, entertainment, charities, sporting clubs – that lie beyond state control. The Soviet Union absolutely destroyed and outlawed every facet of it in Poland, Hungary and Eastern Germany, and made daily life for individuals a life in which everything outside of the immediate family unit was 100% defined by the state: where you worked, how you worked, where and how you were schooled, what you did with your leisure time, and so on.

Due to excessive paranoia, the chance of being arrested and thrown into the Gulag, or even executed for crimes real or imagined, was very high – perhaps even if it was a distant family member whose acts brought suspicion upon you. Woe betide you further if you were Jewish in the era during and after high Stalinism; societies that were already anti-Semitic toward the few Jews not murdered during the previous decades were goaded into more vile acts of Jew-hate by their puppetmasters in Moscow, and by the leaders in their own countries doing their bidding. As we know, even after this era, the Soviet-led tyranny of these countries continued for nearly four more grim decades. The opening of the state archives after 1989 was certainly a great gift to history, and to this book.

If you ask me whether Applebaum has any real nuance toward her subject – meaning, does she provide a "counter-argument" to the Soviet Union's stupidity and hideousness – I'd say no, she definitely does not. Neither do I, as it happens, nor should we. American and British paranoia during the Cold War was based upon fact and reality, if played out a bit strangely and in "un-American" ways at times. Marxist ideology had within it that the great revolutions were at hand and were soon to play out in country after country. Stalin did all he could, through terror and initimidation, to bend history to fit the established Marxist narrative. It's a sad epoch that many of us alive actually lived through, though thankfully in my case in the freedoms of the West, and in the final two decades of Eastern Europe's subjegation. 

This book is an essential overview of just how good people like me and my parents had it, living on the soil that we did when we did, without even talking about the United States nor about the west at all. It also underscores how different life might have been for people like my Jewish wife, or my friends or Polish or German descent, had their parents and their parents' parents not emigrated out of Eastern Europe in the years before World War II, and had they even made it into the late 40s and early 50s after years of slaughter and killing. It's abundantly clear that this was truly a rotten time and place to have been alive, and that we ignore how it all played out to our own ignorance and peril.

BOOK REVIEW: "KIDS OF THE BLACK HOLE: PUNK ROCK IN POSTSUBURBAN CALIFORNIA by Dewer MacLeod

A book about punk rock in late 70s/early 80s Southern California – absolutely impossible for me to resist. I did hold off for three years on Dewer MacLeod's "KIDS OF THE BLACK HOLE" because, at first flip, it appeared to be a dissertation-level sociological study of suburban evolution in Reagan-era Los Angeles, threaded with warmed-over punk rock history – a history I'm well-familiar with, given that LA punk & its offshoots circa '77-'83 is my favorite era of music anywhere, ever. My initial take on this was not very wide of the mark, I'm afraid, though it was just interesting enough – and I mean just – for me to finish it all the way through. It's not that MacLeod's a poor writer per se, because he's not. He just writes like he's needing to turn this in as a paper to a professor who could never understand the paradigm-busting pleasures of Southern California punk rock, so the book is larded with all sorts of half-baked sociological theory in parts, when it's pretty clear that what MacLeod really wanted to do was give you a slam-bang killer overview of the music he loved and loves.

So what you get is a conventional start-to-finish chronological story of how LA punk developed out of the glitter/glam mid-70s, exploded in Hollywood, branched out to Orange County and the Valley, got violent and faster, and then fizzled out. What bugs me is how much MacLeod relies on second-hand source material, like old Slash Magazines and the oral histories already written about this scene, and adds so little of his own recollections and stories to it. The interviews he quotes aren't, by and large, interviews that he did, but rather interviews from Flipside, or Slash, or NoMag. I mean, that's a book that you and I can write tomorrow, assuming a decent-sized heft to our personal 70s/80s fanzine collections.

I'll admit, there was at least one new-to-me nugget in here that hadn't popped up elsewhere. My pal Jerry from Orange County has told me some pretty hilarious stories of a goony early 80s punk rock gang from the small OC suburb of La Mirada called the "La Mirada Punks" - the "LMPs". They made this book! Hooray LMPs! Chris D. and the Flesh Eaters, one of my all-time faves as well, also merit a couple of short paragraphs, which is a goddamn miracle considering how shut out they've been from previous texts. I truly wish there had been more insider dope and less haven't-I-read-that-somewhere-before moments.

That's not the worst of it, with all due respect to MacLeod. The book will start talking about hardcore punk pit fighting among bandana-wearing morons at TSOL and Adolescents shows, for instance, and then screech to a halt for an overview of gangs in America - "greasers" and Zoot Suit-wearers in the 50s and so on – to put it all in its sociological context. It's boring, it's unconvincing, and again, it reads like a college essay. Then the book gets back on track again with some cool Germs and Black Flag stories or discussions of the Great Punk Scare of 1981, before the cycle repeats itself. In no way would I recommend this book as your intro into LA punk history; for that, I'd follow a path through "Hardcore California", "We Got The Neutron Bomb", "Violence Girl" and the outstanding "Lexicon Devil – The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash". THEN, if you're not satiated – I'm still not, by any means – then you should find a used copy of this one, and approach with caution.

BOOK REVIEW: "THE AGE OF THE IMAGE - REDEFINING LITERACY IN A WORLD OF SCREENS" by Stephen Apkon

2013 seems to be the year of excessive hand-wringing about our digital-dominated present. I've indulged in some of it myself. When we're not bemoaning the deaths or slow death pangs of totemic rituals like record store shopping; bookstore browsing; long, contemplative reading; and analog-based cinema, we're fretting that our children are organically moving away from the necessary sorts of book-learning that helped make each of us whom we are today (for better or for worse, right?) - and that we've created a short-attention-span generation that is already rewiring itself into a cohort that's, well, dumber than previous generations. It may all be very much true. I certainly have my worries. Stephen Apkon turns the nervous blabbering into something quite a bit more realistic and hopeful for today's digital denizens; his book title, "The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens" truly says it all.

Apkon helped to found the Jacob Burns Film Center in New York City, and teaches both aspiring filmmakers and collaborates with students of the visual form there. He's strongly invested in evolving our understanding of the cultural world in which we find ourselves, and he's an excellent writer and transmitter of both fact and opinion. The first half of his book is exactly what I'd hoped it will be: succor for a nervous digital-age dad that the move toward visual literacy, as opposed to written-word literacy, isn't such a bad thing after all. Apkon confirms and relays much of the recent scientific literature that our brains are wired to accept, understand and retain visual imagery much better than we do the written word. Words on paper, unlike things we can see with our own eyes, either on the Serengeti plain or on YouTube, are a fully human construct. We forced this method of learning and understanding upon ourselves several centuries ago, and yes, it has served us well. Now technology has reached the stage - and the affordability - that we can tell our stories in a manner even more conducive to actual retention and understanding, something that our brains understand, retain and appreciate even more.

As a lover of great film who can easily be brought to tears through a fantastic image or film sequence - I'm thinking right now about the first zoom directly into Liv Ullmann's face when Erland Josephson tells her he wants a divorce in Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes From A Marriage", which made me pause the VHS tape and catch my breath and dab my eyes when I first saw it fifteen years ago - I'm fully bought in to how powerful and incisive the visual image can be in the hands of a great director. Like Apkon, I'm in no hurry to see book-learning die, either. His premise that we all need to understand and appreciate the conventions of visual imagery - how they're made, how they can be manipulated for good and for ill, and what tools are available for each of us to engage in making them - is spot-on, and I'd like to see his manifesto help to prod the educational establishments in each of our respective countries into a modest curriculum shift. I'm sold.

The book took a wicked left turn about two-thirds of the way in that I wasn't expecting at all. Apkon goes full-on professor all of a sudden, and extends his thesis into practical instruction on how to make a film (even if that film is only a 2-minute smartphone video). What is a producer? How do you set up your lighting? What apertures should you consider? That's where I stepped off the book for a chapter or two, in order to rejoin later for the concluding chapters. Perhaps it's because I'm a know-it-all fortysomething who doesn't need nor want to learn how to make a film. Perhaps I'm good enough already at understanding what goes into image-making, even if I don't do it myself. Or maybe I was just looking for a sociological and cultural overview of the state of visual learning and visual technology, and how it compares to our traditional way of understanding literacy, and wasn't looking for a hands-on practicum.

Regardless, I got what I wanted out of this book, and I found it be a very good thought-provoker. Others might approach the book from different angles, and that's good - he's certainly got a couple of different angles from which to approach it.

OTHERWORLDLY AND GONE - MY NEW PODCAST & BLOG

After a few false starts, I've decided to put together a blog and podcast devoted to raw 20th century ethnic music from around the world, primarily from old 78rpm records, with some room allowed for recordings up into the 1970s. I threw together the first podcast last night, and I figure it's a good time to "launch" the thing now.

The whole purpose for the new Otherworldly and Gone blog is to provide a home for the Otherworldly and Gone podcast, and the first of what will hopefully be many podcasts is now available for download or streaming.

This first edition of the OTHERWORLDLY AND GONE podcast is an hour-long blast of 78rpm tunes from the nether regions of the world - Greece, Kenya, Cuba, Bulgaria, Morocco, Sweden and Azerbaijan among them. I call this one "Curating the Curators" because it's a culling and selection from some of the best reissues of the past two decades, all lovingly put together by some of the most rabid and frothing ethnic music collectors on the planet.
 
Here's how you can listen!

Download "Otherworldly and Gone #1 – Curating the Curators" here. (follow link, then download on that page)
Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.
Stream the SoundCloud version (you can also download it there).
Stream the MixCloud version.

Track listing:

1.     A KOSTIS – Dertlidikos Horos / V/A, Greek Rhapsody – Instrumental Music From Greece 1905-1956 / Dust-to-Digital
2.     SPYROS PERISTERIS – Tatavliano Hasapiko / V/A, Greek Rhapsody – Instrumental Music From Greece 1905-1956 / Dust-to-Digital
3.     YIORGOS KATSAROS – Erchome Tico Tico Tico (I Creep Along The Walls) / V/A, Mortika – Rare Vintage Recordings from the Greek Underworld / Arko
4.     MOHAMED BERGAM – Zine Mlih (Sublime Beauty) / V/A, Kassidat – Raw 45s from Morocco / Dust-to-Digital
5.     KARLO – Gankino / V/A, Songs of the Crooked Dance – Early Bulgarian Traditional Music, 1927-42 / Yazoo
6.     GRUPO DE LA ALEGRIA – El Tambor de la Alegria / V/A, Hot Women – Women Singers From The Torried Regions / Kein & Aber Records
7.     UKRAINSKA ORCHESTRA PAWLA HUMENIUKA – Ukrainske Wesilla W Ameryci, Pt. 1 (Ukrainian Wedding in America) / V/A, Aimer et Perde / Tompkins Square Records
8.     UKRAINSKA ORCHESTRA PAWLA HUMENIUKA – Ukrainske Wesilla W Ameryci, Pt. 2 (Ukrainian Wedding in America) / V/A, Aimer et Perde / Tompkins Square Records
9.     MARIKA PAPAGIKA – Manaki Mou / The Further The Flame, The Worse It Burns Me / Mississippi /Canary Records
10.   TEMIUV DAMAROV – Jeirany / Excavated Shellac Blog, February 4th, 2008 / Excavated Shellac
11.   STONIK AND KIPRONO – Molido Kiruk-Yuk / V/A, Opika Pende / Dust-to-Digital Records
12.   EMMANUELE CILIA – L’Istorja ta’Arturo u Maria, Part 1 / V/A, Malta’s Lost Voices / Filfla Records
13.   NICK HALIAS – Mperto Pogonisio (Berat From Pogoni) / V/A, Five Years Married and Other Laments / Angry Mom Records
14.   CHRISTER FALKENSTROM – Baklandets Vackra Maja / V/A, Black Mirror / Dust-to-Digital Records