As a teenager, my friend Billy and I listened to Mama Cass on our way to thrift stores and antique shops. I was always completely drawn to Cass’ voice. I connected to her Bubblegum Pop ‘outsider’ numbers like “One Way Ticket” and “Make Your Own Kind of Music”. She wore her individuality as a badge of honor, and in this day and age, that’s certainly something to admire. What’s really amazing about Cass Elliot is how strong her persona still resonates through her music four decades after her death. Her voice gives a very clear sense of who she was.
Cowboys and Indies is a song and sound clip-based mix that jumps from one style to the next at a breakneck pace. Initially I just wanted to do a quick mix of songs I've been listening to over the past months, but as with most of the mixes I start working on, a theme arises and I find myself struggling to make irregular pieces fit together.
Discover a World of Sounds 01 is the first show in a new series I’ll be doing to replace Mixtape Radio. This is yet another mix of offbeat storytelling, pop music, sound effects, and found audio. In returning to create these shows, I’ve begun to use analog tape recordings as source material. It plays a huge part of this first show including songs pulled from tape, reel-to-reel noise, and answering machine clips.
Last fall, I spent two days in Guerneville, a small town an hour outside of San Francisco known as a seasonal resort area for hedonistic gay men. Luckily, autumn was off-season and the only people around were locals… consisting mainly of grey haired hippie ladies and pockmarked meth addicts.
Guerneville sits right on the Russian River. It’s chock full of Northern California rural charm that includes looming red wood trees and a B&B on every corner. Main Street is all of two blocks packed full of antique boutiques, divey gay bars, and tackle/bait shops. Though it has the look and feel of a small conservative Norman Rockwell town, it’s actually a very liberal place with pot smoking skater punks and rusty Ford pickups sporting pro-choice bumper stickers. Also, those pick-up trucks are driven by Lesbians, lots of ‘em.
