Boogie Chitz

Reckless crowned young denim dandy Bryan Adams the surest thing in rock and roll in 1984. Ten flawlessly-constructed and produced songs void of experimentation but full of heart. Adams was at the top of his game - but SOMEONE was watching closely from three-thousand miles southeast of Vancouver.

We got a fresh one on site tonight - only a few months old. Twisted Teens make infectious New Orleans garage rock and have a pedal steel guitar player named Razor Ramone - with an e. Be cool Chico. Nuff said. Blame the Clown is their second album and you must hear.

Erasure are NOW regarded as 'homosexual pop' icons - but back when they started in the eighties no one noticed because EVERYONE was wearing spandex and sequined vests. The duo's second album The Circus is a joyous realization of destiny. Keyboardist/leader Vince Clarke had finally found the perfect front-twink in Andy Bell to sing his songs. For Andy - a dream come true - he was now in...

The paradoxical Mötley Crüe hit the Hair Hunk heavens with Shout at the Devil in 1983 as Frank Ferrana gets to quit his day job and continue one of rock and roll's greatest swindles full-time.

Italian prog rock band Goblin found their destiny during the second half of the 1970's when they became the go-to musical score composers for the hot-shot horror movie directors of Italy. Goblin split at their peak but reunited (most of them) for 1982's Tenebrae - directed by their old friend Dario Argento.

Following the surprise success of their eponymous debut in 1971 the informal New Riders of the Purple Sage needed a couple FULL-time members to keep the party going - including a new pedal steel guitar player - a boutique role not easy to fill. Marmaduke had to go back in time to a quirky train tour across Canada he took part in a year earlier to find their man. Once the classic permanent NRPS lin...

Creatively juiced by the wet-mulleted beefcakes of production team Full Force, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam continued to pump the coffers of the Freestyle genre they helped create with 1987's Spanish Fly - a solid urban dance album in a genre generally defined by singles.

The atmospheric, echo-laden martian world of Dub is the most 'reggae-sounding' varietal of all the reggaes - and it was created by a workaday radio wireman from Kingston. King Tubbys Meets the Rockers Uptown represents Dub at it's finest - quietly released during the global boom of reggae in 1976.

In 1974 forty-five year old Cameroonian Renaissance Man Francis Bebey retired from a career as a journalist and musical director of UNESCO to focus more time on his family and the arts. He turned a spare room of his Parisian flat into a studio, bought a synthesizer, drum machine and four-track recorder - and began an early-retirement musical quest that would last thirty years. Trésor Magnétique is...

Ten years before transforming into a suited-DILF headed for MTV rapture - Robert Palmer along with the coolest cast of session musicians ever - cranked out a spirited blue-eyed funk winner called Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley. An amazing piece of work and yet another gift of the collaborative spirit (aka Satan).

A galley pisser and a tighty-whitey wearer meet in a record store in Athens, Georgia and form R.E.M. They begin their thirty year gentle-rock quest with Murmur - a deep-track treasure considered a Rosetta Stone to all indie-rock that followed.

Released during the height of the Grunge Hunx Dynasty - Dirt remains one of the coolest albums of the 1990s - an absolutely heroic effort by Jerry Cantrell. Dirt was Alice In Chains' brief view from the top before beginning the inevitable slalom down smack mountain.

A dispatch of wonderful garage sleaze from France made by a Boogie Chitz supergroup consisting of The Limiñanas, loose-of-mind Anton from Jonestown and Emmanuelle Seigner - the GILF wife of creepo director Roman Polanski.

Even as the musical tide was shifting from the Golden Oldies Era to the Classic Rock one in 1963, the radio was still filled with snappy sing-alongs regardless of genre. You had to go to the jazz rack for exploratory action - and even in that world the gently-cosmic lounge swing of Moon Gas is one of a kind.

Somewhere is the only release by Gum Country - a side project of the guitarist from artisanal grunge band The Courtneys. Infectious 1990s shoegaze rockery for the present day slacker - it's hard to believe an album this catchy can be so obscure. A 'blind listening' treasure to the fullest.

We enter the world of Kosmische Musik thru the psychedelic soundscapes of Manuel Göttsching's Ash Ra Temple. Starring Rosi was the fifth and final Ash Ra LP - and it's definitely the sonic outlier of the batch - the only one that comes close to a traditionally-tracked rock record. This of course is only noticeable once you've actually sampled the first four - which we will do.

Given the MTV buzz and debutantal boom the Bangles experienced during the second half of their run, it's easy to forget their debut LP is a bonafide hitless alt-rock classic. All Over the Place reminds us that the Bangles were a really cool Paisley Underground band before the Egyptian pantomimes and Prince lil' purple penis pageantry.

During summer 1972 - in between the end of a historic European run and a tour schedule that would have the band zipping around the country for the rest of the year, the Grateful Dead made a stop in Oregon to help their old friends Chuck and Sue Kesey save their small yogurt company from financial collapse. Great show choice Bana.

A young guitarist named Maximiliano Chavez experiences a flash of divinity when he discovers the Wah-Wah guitar pedal in mid-1960s Peru and assembles Los Orientales de Paramonga - one of the cornerstone bands of Peru's psychedelic Chicha scene. Fiesta en Oriente was the band's second album - and the only one they recorded for the understatedly-historic Infopesa Records.

The most exhilarating rock album of the nineties came from the guitar and mouth of one of the most lovable heroes of the college rock eighties. Five years after the end of Hüsker Dü and without record label support, Bob Mould formed Sugar and found his melody on their debut album Copper Blue in 1992 - a ten-track treasure buried in plain sight amongst the chaotic Hair to Grunge Hunk transition of...

A hobbyist Sikh devotional singer and her three sons create the first ever Asian-infused electronic dance album in England at their kitchen table in the Punjabi-populated London suburb of Southall in 1982. The record sat in obscurity until this year when Naya Beat resurrected and reissued the magic for our consumption.

A solid discog you could hold in one hand - Dead Kennedys managed to make some awesome rock and roll while simultaneously defying music industry promises and pee-pee tugs. We're gonna nip thru the whole DK catalog but go HARD on Frankenchrist - Dead Kennedys number three - where the San Francisco-ness of Jello and the gang shines thru a little more than their perky punk past.

The first music ever recorded in the multi-track format in Ethiopia came about from a Swedish national living in Addis Ababa who offered use of his four-track recorder to a group of Ethio-Jazz workhorses named Ibex Band. The Ibex boys welcomed the opportunity and set up shop in the empty ballroom of a hotel. For two days they made magic that would lay dormant for close to fifty years before a form...

If you've ever listened to or bought this album because of (Don't Fear) The Reaper - then you were in for a big surprise upon the initial neck-to-nut - All five members of the BÖC each sing lead on at least öne of the ten tracks of Agents of Fortune. Nine other nuggets that sound nothing like the Reap - or each other - but somehow flow with flawless cohesion. An awesome classic rock record...

After a decade of missionary work in Singapore, Sister Irene O'Connor returns home to Australia and unleashes her one true miracle - a 12-song lo-fi/high-spirit psyche-pop classic called Fire of God's Love.