Today, we look at the albums and labels that were born to lose money. The artifacts of music industry mischief and copyright chicanery.

What happens when bands relinquish some control of their aesthetic sound to orangutans and toasters or dugongs and doomsday devices? Are we breaking new ground or just finding yet another source of novelty? Or both. Over two episodes we will explore the merger of non-human caterwauling and popular music. How much of this is simply a gimmick and how much is a sincere exploration of music outside the influence of mankind?

On today’s show, we’re casting our line out as far as we can to reel in an episode about a music style that is as expansive, deep, majestic, and mysterious as the oceans themselves.

We're back at work after a few (hundred) days off but before we overload your senses with silly trivia, music history, and killer tunes, we're bringing you our Halloween 2023 mix. Play it for your friends and neighbors if they like scary sounds you can dance and scream to

In today's episode, we take a break from taking breaks and present a mix of sounds and music to unnerve you.

From 1963 to 1967 hundreds of songs about the Beatles, but not by the Beatles, were issued by no name artists on tiny fly-by-night labels. An unimaginable amount of these mop top dedications were simply trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel of Beatlemania Bucks. And while the whole band received an unending amount of adulation from the masses of music makers, there was one member who had an almost metaphysical magnetism for bad musicians: Mr. Ringo Starr.

In this episode, we track the legacy of the music of the grittiest of film styles. Scores of scores that are riddled with bullet holes, whiskey bottles, scattered cards, wanted posters, and bloodstains. Tunes that put a bounty on your mind and will ride you down in the desert. So, saddle up your pony and load your six-gun. Down that bottle and kiss your senoritas farewell, Prepare yourself for double-crosses, and double double crosses. Get another coffin ready. Today, we’re shooting for the history of Spaghetti Western Music.

In this episode, we are going to explore the pop stars who found fans in spite of (or perhaps because of) their gross musical incompetence and who were demonstratively aesthetically just plain bad. The small handful of musicians who would be, under all circumstances, considered conventionally terrible at music yet manage to attain success. Those who through sheer will or perhaps complete ignorance managed to make a name for themselves. And those who were exploited, mocked, and enjoyed ironically but still fought to the top.

Bagpipes are a sonorous and ceaseless instrument. Almost comically so. The traditional Scottish Bagpipe is the loudest unamplified instrument known to man. Decibel levels range upwards of 110, which puts them far closer to thunderclaps and power tools than pianos and oboes. And if the deafening sound doesn’t get you, then the constancy of its noise certainly will. The chanter of a bagpipe is open, which means that once a piper has used the blow stick to fill the bag, the instrument cannot (and will not) be silenced until all the air is released. The spectacular implacable multi-dimensional soundscapes made by a stand of pipes are typically more unleashed than controlled. In fact, it requires technical playing to create an allusion of articulation and tone accents. In essence, the player bends to the will of the instrument, not the other way around...its the anti-Theremin. As James Reid, Bill Millin, and John Cale can all attest, the bagpipe is a fierce musical weapon. The power seems to be a tempting inclusion to engorge the depths of songcraft, yet, there have been so few popular musical artists who have attempted to integrate bagpipes into their songs. Even fewer used bagpipes on a regular basis. In today’s episode, we are going to explore the tenuous relationship between the sack and the song. To find the brave souls who marched into the mainstream with nothing but pipes, pride, provocations, and piercing pandemonium. We are going to lift the kilt on one of the world’s most maligned and misunderstood music-makers. So, take a deep breath and blow as hard as you can, squeeze your bag tightly, finger your chanter nimbly, and don’t stop until you or your audience passes out….because we are startin’ to tartan. Today, bagpipes in popular music.

It’s that time of year again, where we get pretty sick of hearing about Christmas. For this, unbelievably, our fourth Christmas episode we are going to carry on the tradition of taking an episode to talk about some of the weirder, smaller stories that we’ve wanted to cover, but wouldn’t fit in with a full-length turntable talk. A veritable cornucopia of record oddities. So, sit back and get ready to have your stockings stuffed with some fascinating tales of rock star mishaps and vinyl vanities. Stoke your fire, spike your eggnog, and don your winter’s cap, cause you’re about to be visited by the ghost of music history’s past.

In this episode, we are going to stare into the cold dead eyes of the dummies. We are going to explore why and how adults mimicking mannerisms into lifeless masses became the preeminent evangelical apparatus. And how things went so far off the rails. So, dim the lights and focus the spotlight. Put on your duck tail tuxedo. Tip your top hat jauntily askew. Straighten your bowtie. Stick your hand up the bottom of your favorite inanimate object and throw your voice as far it goes. Join as we walk through the uncanny valley of the dolls. Just don’t let us see your lips move. Today, the wacky world of puppet records, you dummies.

Almost as long as humans have mastered the ability to record the environment around them, they have desired to record the world that is just beyond them. A perfectly logical endeavour, as all recorded music is somewhat supernatural, especially when cocaine and LSD are involved. Recorded sound is by its very nature taken from another place, a distant place, and thrust into a moment where it doesn’t belong and couldn’t exist without human manipulation. The technology that unlocks these past dimensions surely mustn't stop there...what other realms can be explored.

In this episode we look at how graphic novels are pushing the boundaries of pop music history, bringing new perspectives and fans.

As radio, and eventually television, became a fixture in American homes, a celebrity culture was solidified. With this fascination for the people that we hear and see almost daily, there was a longing to understand them. A striving for connection that lets people feel like they really know who this star is and maybe, one day, that star could know who they really are as well. These conditions of idol worship created a lucrative playing field for companies to draw upon the status of fame to sell their goods. Beyond the normal response that music can invoke in listeners, the draw was much stronger if the message came from a recognized, trusted, and desirable source. Today, we explore the literal commercialization of rock music.

Night Bus, Late Night Grocery Run, & Pink Motel are microgenres that represent their own experiential sound, where the songs are held together by the atmospheres they invoke rather than a specific set of rules or location in time and space. The music, primarily captured on singles, was created by private press or no name labels with dreams of making it big or at least making a few bucks. The mood of these micro-genres provides a faded snapshot of the 1980s with a depraved combination of the excess and frivolity of popular styles of the time: RnB, disco, funk, AOR, and synthpop.

Many of us are captivated by albums that were created while the artists were in mental hospitals. They are rare artifacts that unfortunately end up defining the artist for their careers while giving an undue amount of weight to the condition of their mind rather than the beauty within it. The artistry that comes from the pain and confusion of confinement . . . in a hospital and in one’s mind. The records are snapshots of musicians on the brink that utilized songs to communicate their struggle or alleviate suffering. Today, we are exploring Institutional Albums made by Roky Erickson, Skip Spence, and Daniel Johnston.

There is a long history of the unjust treatment of women musicians whose contributions were often overlooked, dismissed, or stolen. Sadly, it’s likely to be a long future as well. This is on the top of the extra effort and persistence that it took to establish themselves in a sexist business that is stacked against female creators and performers. In particular, the development of experimental and electronic music has been established on the skills of a number of women artists who made monumental and transformative contributions to forward-thinking, technology-minded music. Unfortunately, many of these artists remain far too obscure for their importance in progressing the genre. This episode is an examination of the unsung women who shaped the sounds during the formative years of electronic music.

Ween set forth on a career-long ambition to tear down standard music industry conventions by hook or by crook. To take that which is weird, obnoxious, and unclean, and show it as important as the falsely pristine parts of life. They were never more successful in this endeavor than on their 76 minute slog of a second record, The Pod. Recorded alone together in Dean and Gene Ween’s apartment that was a converted barn smack dab in the middle of a horse field while both were suffering through mono and high on, well, probably everything. The record sounds like you need to scrape off layers and layers of shit and grime to get the pop tunes hidden within. Underneath the juvenile jokes, the impressive assemblage of vulgarity, fast food orders, molasses-dipped song-smithing, sonic fuckery, squishy atmosphere, and overall friendly misanthropic posturing is a solid and comprehensive American pop music revue. Dinner theater at the slaughterhouse.

Today’s episode is a continuing examination of the strange bedfellows of cults and music. In the first installment, we discussed some of the more academic reasons why leaders and their minions utilize music to recruit, indoctrinate, isolate, and elevate their group, so today we are going to dive right into the fringiest of the fringe groups. The absurd ashrams. The Kookiest communes. The flakiest faiths. The goofiest gurus. The screwiest sects. And the zaniest zealots. So go ahead and plaster your best “Up with People” smile on that face, schedule tomorrow’s deprogramming session, and hunker in your bunker as we prepare to astrally project the second installment of the fascinating world of cult music.

In this episode, we delve into the bizarre world of music made from within cults. Tunes that were left behind as relics of evidence of exploitation and excessive, destructive devotion. Results that are so strange because they were almost certainly weaponized by a brainwashed minion. Music that is created in a vacuum of narcissism, removed from free thought and outside influence. Hymns to self-appointed prophets, saviors, divine conduits, Christ reincarnates, gurus, faith healers, alien leaders, and Sting (probably). We will look at music from some of the world’s most infamous cults as well as the songs that are so insular, they make no sense outside of their context, even when that context makes no sense either. So, cleanse off your chakra, open your mind, pull on your robes, lace up your Nikes. Today, the music of the cults. Join us, won’t you? Forever?

Talk Talk's 1991 album “Laughing Stock” could not have been a more appropriately titled record. The album which was such an immense departure from the single-churning shiny new wave pop band that had just a few years prior gone to #1 on the dance charts. There would be no dancing to this. A record that is quiet, dark, spacious, and distant. But who exactly is the butt of this joke? A new label that gave an extremely popular band unlimited freedom and resources. Fans who had no idea what to make of an album that is more about environment, impressions, and mood than a traditional song structure? The critics who were too confused to recognize genius or too sure of themselves to recognize confusion? Or the band themselves that were in an unending process or reinvention only to find that they were back to square one? Maybe that is right where they wanted to be. As we continue to delve into different forms of isolation shaped and sculpted into musical artifacts, Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock is intentionally distancing from the sentiment and bias of the past. A band that desperately works to create space and blatant disregard from what they are supposed to be. And in the end, it turns out to be too destructive of a force for the group to continue.

What do you get when you cross a joke and a rhetorical question? In the 1920s, an answer to that might have been the laughing record fad. 78s featuring uncontrollable cackling took hold of the culture causing a sort of mass hysteria in the sitting rooms around the world. It was a regular pole-sitter laughageddon. Inexplicably, millions of people could not get enough of songs that were interrupted with the wild pre-recorded howls and snorts flatulating from their Victrola phonograph machines. The bizarre novelty record phenomenon had a long lasting impact in both humanizing the nascent technology and laying the groundwork for embedded laugh tracks to assist audiences with remembering the hilarity they were witnessing. On this episode, we chuckle, chortle, snicker, titter, giggle, and guffaw our way through the bust-your-gut history of laughing records.

In a sense, private press records are the ultimate form of isolation music. They are albums that are created completely on an island. Often, recorded by a single person. Usually, created without any support or belief. Always, made without the assistance of a label to provide funding, resources, marketing, or expertise. Putting out a private press record is an act of faith. Bobb Trimble might be the king of the private press.

The Paisley Underground might be the first mix-tape scene. Not really a genre at all, but a collective of people who had similar interests and influences who all happened to be in bands. The music was defined more by what it wasn’t...not punk, not singer-songwriter, not hard rock, not New Romantic. It was entirely synthesized by openly combining parts of beloved sounds of the past into a fresh and forward-thinking way.

From 1991 through 1997, the Mountain Goats has 21 releases with a total of 188 songs. In 1998, only 4 songs, and in 1999, zero. In this episode we look at what might have been happening during that absence, with a focus on the album that showed up next.