That Record Got Me High Podcast

Rob and Barry reach back into the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s for The Pretty Things' "Parachute," the greatest album you've likely never heard by the greatest band you've probably never heard of. David Bowie covered TWO of their songs on his Pinups album, and wrote a song with their name in the title. This album is a gem, simultaneously tough and warm, musically ambitious but appea...

This week we talk with Rick Ahmed about the labor of love that he and his brother Gary embarked on and are bringing to a conclusion this Friday. It's a documentary about South Florida's beloved and notorious LOAD, who tore up Miami, Fort Lauderdale and the Southeast from the early 90s through the early 2000s. We get drunk on beer at The Laser Wolf in honor of the late Bobby ("Bobby Load") Johnston...

Rob and Barry put on our wrap-around shades and faux leather jackets, park our Camaro behind the dumpster, and sneak into the New Wave club to catch The Boomtown Rats, before their frontman Bob Geldof moved on to Band Aid and Live Aid. Those events would put his band in a shadow, and less remembered than they might be otherwise. Best known for "I Don't Like Mondays," The Fine Art of Surfacing has...

We gather to say "hats off" to the recently deceased Pete Shelley, leader of the Buzzcocks, and to revisit their heavily influential singles compilation "Singles Going Steady". Return guest Tim Moffatt tells his very lurid story involving PS, booze, hotels, Fort Lauderdale, and things he didn't know but found out quick. Rob and Barry are looking for sponsors, so hit us up at trgmh33@gmail.com if y...

In the late '80s, Big Dipper released four records on the very hip Homestead label, which won them critical acclaim and a decent-sized fan base in the US and Europe. When their Homestead contract expired, the band looked for a new label that could get them to the mythical 'next level'. Big Dipper signed to Epic. The band came home with a record they thought would be well-received. From an business...

In lieu of a scheduled appearance by the entire Big Dipper ensemble (next week, come hell or high water), Rob and Barry make haste not waste and deliver an episode about a monolith of underground music, Wire's debut, "Pink Flag." The list of luminaries (and lesser lights) who have copped to stealing wholesale from this treasure trove of ideas would fill the rest of this page. Brief songs touching...

Barry, Rob and Ivan Soliani go further back than we ever have to the 1967 masterpiece by Pete, Roger, John and Keith, The Who Sell Out. Although it contains their one and only US hit single ("I Can See For Miles"), the balance of the album is a quirky collection of songs interspersed with clever commercials. Some of the songs rate amongst the best the band ever recorded, and it has become a favori...

John Camacho, a South Florida music veteran who quit the mean streets of Miami-Dade and Broward for the idyllic ancient hills of North Carolina brings us an album that touched him deeply. Joni's meisterwerk is indeed a penetrating and impeccable portrait of the early 1970s music scene, and her legendary voice is all over it. The LA studio pros who back her up give it some jazz cred, and Five Stars...

Like two old goats fighting over a rusty coffee can, Barry and Rob lock horns over Rob's pick of Emo concept album "The Black Parade." It's more of a classic rock record than anything, which Barry delights in pointing out, while Rob follows the album's narrative thread until said thread sort of goes off the rails. Both Styx and Beck come up, although no Styx songs were used in the production of th...

Back to basics for That Record Got Me High, with your lovable(?) cohosts hitting on that hot girl at the bar, 1974's "Secret Treaties" by Blue Oyster Cult. Beguiling, obtuse, impenetrable and smart, with an Oz behind the curtains flipping switches and using advanced mind-control techniques on enthralled listeners. It's an amazing album, and it left us kneeling in the rain.

Bassist Tony "Qualls in" from Tampa to give us the "Load down" on a brilliant slice of punk metal from NO MEANS NO, Canadians who helped pioneer the sound taken to much greater commercial heights by others in the 1990s. Wrong is a start-to-finish fantastic album, which barely pauses to take a breath between sprints of intense, precise and aggro riffing. https://nomeansnomusic.bandcamp.com/album/wr...

Jeffrey Lee Pierce and his band the Gun Club created a singular masterpiece in 1981, "Fire Of Love." When we asked South Florida local and legendary musician Charlie Pickett if he wanted to come on the show, he said yes, and "Fire Of Love" was the first, second and third choice of what record he wanted to discuss. Both of us were very much on board with it, as the record still stands as a pure rea...

Last week we had a Duran Duran fanatic, and this week we follow suit with a Siouxsie & The Banshees superfan, Woody Compton, half of the web comic "Is This Tomorrow." We struggle to find fault with anything in this album, and it's place in the pantheon is well-deserved. Juju is a masterpiece, and perhaps the late John McGeoch's finest half of an hour.

We wanted to have Teajay come on the show because she makes all of our lives better and more interesting, and she is a Duran Duran super fan. Her choice is their US breakout album, Rio, which introduced the world and especially a lot of young women to the extremely handsome and likewise talented boys. It's a mighty fine album, and the videos are legendary documents of the early 1980s.

Josh Clemons calls in from the DEEP South to help us out as we aggrandize the in-no-way-in-need-of-aggrandizing #1 Record by Memphis, Tennessee's talented Big Star. Their songs of teen angst and proto-power pop music wouldn't get their due for more than a decade, but man…this stuff is fantastic. As with any good Southern rock and roll story, there's emotional instability, conflicted feelings, and...

Live at The Laser Wolf, three boys who were dragged by the ear by their moms into the husky section at Sears back in the 70s to buy clothes to get beat up in school in – (whew) – take a few swings at Too Much Too Soon, the second and final album by The New York Dolls' original lineup. Mark Dubin cries a couple of times, and an infamous racist Florida restaurant gets dredged up from the tarpit of h...

Another piecemeal masterpiece, as Joe and Co.'s original 1977 UK debut gets sliced and diced with added spice, and Battalion of Saints and Reactions drummer Joey Maya plugs his new book of lurid tales. We're not really worthy to talk about this album, but true to form, we suit up and drive around the track in the TRGMH clown car.

A Stones album of tarted-up outtakes from the previous decade gets the once over with the sharpened sticks by Rob, Barry and guest Steve Grothmann, who escaped from Tampa with only the cassette player on his back and a song in his underpants. Turns out it's a pretty great record, and better than ones they probably worked harder on.

The inimitable and suave Frank Falestra, aka Rat Bastard, condo board president and retired Airline President, joins Rob and Barry to discuss the recorded works of Mark Edwards under the band name My Dad Is Dead. His 2005 release A Divided House is what Rat wanted to focus on, and we manage to focus, a little, in between phone calls and ribald stories. Apologies to Mark Edwards for another round o...

Rob, Barry and Jesse Small from Milk Spot gnaw like poodles on the second of Frank Zappa's post-head injury discs, the Eskimo-infested and Cosmik Debris-buffeted "Apostrophe", all while drinking the fine concoctions (well, Rob and Barry anyway) poot forth by The Laser Wolf. Frank survives unscathed, despite having died 25 years ago, and still continuing to influence young bon vivants like Jesse.

Holly Tavel calls in on a rotary phone from a distant galaxy to discuss the mysterious Lawrence and his band Felt. We try and keep up with L and his compatriot Maurice Deebank through the course of their third album, although it is admitted that our chisels don't make much of an impact on the edifice, impressive and vexing though it is. The haunting daylight mystery remains unscathed.

Rob and guest Derek Hyde take turns piloting the river boat up the Great Miami River to Dayton, Ohio, home of the prolific, erratic genius Robert Pollard. The cargo is Guided By Voices' 1992 album Propellor, the album which PROPELLED them into great acclaim and a career in the wider spaces. Barry is allowed to look at the scenery but is sent below deck like Lurch in The Addams Family when he makes...

Broward County's lovable(?), voluble dullards manage to rope in an actual authority to discuss the very very English Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks. Marianne Spellman, who travelled with and photographed The Kinks on their early 1980s tours, brings her lifelong love and knowledge of Ray, Dave et co. to our ribald den of cobbled together bullshit, and elevates things considerably.

We follow Dorothy (Tim Moffatt) down the Yellow Brick Road to hell, as he espouses a "unique" conspiracy theory regarding Butthole Surfers' 1993 Independent Worm Saloon. By the end we are all in for human sacrifice and special Kool Aid.

The Sabbs emerge from the potent sludge of Vol. 4 with a decidedly nuanced effort, featuring synths and orchestration, but with some of their heaviest riffs as well. Rob, Barry, and guest Brandon Samdahl get into their teenage costumes and travel back to when they first heard the metal masterpiece, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. thatrecordgotmehigh.com trgmh33@gmail.com