Boogie Chitz

Fifteen track gift from Analog Africa proving that you can't spell Funaná without F-U-N. Bemba Restrepo's discovery on the shores of São Nicolau adds an extra jolt of weirdness to the traditional sounds of Cabo Verde.

Keystone Berkeley ran live music shows for twelve years and also served as a favorite hangout spot for rockers living in the Bay Area. Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia were two of those  - and had been ripping it up together regularly for a year and a half when they decided to record their action to tape. Live at Keystone was the result and is a real-time capture of a musical friendship between two...

Gelli Haha is a new act and it is my job as Mr. Cool music show host to alert you of her existence. Switcheroo is fun-ass dance music - slammers about Italian desserts and pissing in glass jars that sound more like little electric kisses than songs.

I love Bleached tremendously - so it's on a curve when I say Welcome the Worms is one of the better no-fuss rock records of the past decade - a controlled frenzy of catchy songs made by an instantly-likable band. Also - the Canseco Twins find themselves on a path to fantasy fulfillment - turns out that fantasy is only four blocks away.

Before Daft Punk got the robot sex change operations and became the sound of global gloss there was Homework - the self-financed and home-recorded debut. And it's fantastic.

While not the most coveted 'Mats LP - Hootenanny is the one that got them out of the icy Jesse Ventura-ness of their beloved Minnesota - and on the road to alt-rock knighthood. This is where Paul Westerberg began to fully embrace the joys of socially ergonomic songwriting...sometimes.

Here we are blessed with a baker's dozen of Anatolian-flavored funk nuggets via the side project of a Swedish film and television composer.

The eponymous third aka Grey Album from 1969 began the second half of the VU's run - the forgotten half - when they were an actual touring rock and roll band trying to pop big. No Warhol, no New York City and no John Cale. A deep track dynamo without the literal AND figurative feedback of the past. Lou's older brother Roy shows up though.

Back to Zamrock with Amanaz (Ask me about nice artistes in Zambia). The group only made one album - 1975's Africa - but that's all that is needed to ingest the 'One Zambia, one nation, three chords' spirit.

Led Zeppelin return from the meadows of Bron-Yr-Aur, shave the beards and begin another three album run that would lead them to the top of King Shit Mountain. They would get one last look from its peak with Physical Graffiti - a deep track orgy that showcases Zep at full creative mast.

A new wave band made up of musically-gifted members of Frank Zappa's backing band, Missing Persons dropped a solid debut in 1982 that's kind of a paradox - loose music made by the tightest of musicians. Oh, and they also had a singer that nailed Prince.

The same year their Seattle cohorts made flannel globally sexy Mudhoney stayed local and loyal to their friends at Sub Pop and released Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge - an unrelenting pounder that sounds the beating heart of the Grunge Hunx Dynasty.

Disco was becoming played out in America at the start of the 1980's but it was just getting started in Italy. Pino D'Angiò landed a YMCA-level Italian hit with the song Ma Quale Idea in 1980. The following year he unleashed the full Power of Pino with his debut LP Balla! This is Italo-Disco at it's Satanic best.

WoV was way too loose with the drizzugs to build any sort of career sustainability - but they managed to uncork the forgotten classic Call of the West along the way - angular art rock that cuts through the collective 1982 whoosh of parachute pants.

The Ghetto Brothers were one of thousands of street gangs that skulked the busted-ass neighborhoods of the Bronx in leather vests during the 1970's. I think they are the only one that formed a band though. Power Fuerza is the lone musical relic left behind by the good-guy gang known as the GB's.

Hair Hunk Titans Poison fought their way thru pubic lice and a universally-perceived lack of talent to crank out their debut - Look What the Cat Dragged In - an overachieving classic squeezed into a 1986 already overstuffed with guitars, drums and spandex pant.

The USA was on fire in 1969 with Vietnam War protests and such. Everyone had a voice and wanted to be heard. But they also wanted to be SEEN. It was a flashy year of afros, flower power, bouncy boob-curtains and bush. The last year of the sixties was an eccentric one - and it was largely soundtracked by the four average Americans of Creedence Clearwater Revival. CCR dropped three in 1969 and Green...

During the 1970's while China and Vietnam were busy playing grab-ass and keep-away with the Spratly and Percocet island chains in the South China Sea, the other countries surrounding the water like Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia funk'd their way into the next decade. Ayo Ke Disco, curated by Alice from Soundway Records, provides us safe listening passage thru this fantastic sea of sound...

LCD Soundsystem is an exhaustive one-hundred minute affair that showcases the best of what the combination of rock and dance music can become when crafted by the hands of an erudite music nerd. LCD eponymous - the start of a relatively flawless catalog that continues into the now.

Marty Robbins' cinematic western music classic was released at the end of a decade that would soon be overshadowed by the one that followed. JFK was about to be President, the Beatles were about to form, but for now in 1959, we have Marty Robbins singing songs about other men. And horses.

So few bands remain that were born during the post-MTV, pre-streaming and social media purgatorial zone of the mid-aughts. Woods are still with us. And despite having one significant kink in their curb appeal, they bring twenty years of codeine-dipped freak folk and high-value return to the listener's ears. City Sun Eater in the River of Light is my favorite of their hot dozen.

The 1980s proved that as big as forty-something millionaire cultural icon Bob Dylan was during the decade, he was not bigger than the ever-evolving and fickle world of rock and roll. ATO Records' A Tribute to Bob Dylan in the 80s contains seventeen covers of songs from Bob's least-celebrated decade.

Myself, my dad and the Canseco Twins neutralize Dee Dee's annoying production duo so that she can crank out a classic without interference. Too True is the final (boo) and best (yay) Dum Dum Girls album. A catchy atmospheric finale to a five-year run powered by good ol' work ethic.

Exclusion was a word rarely used in Grateful Dead world - so in April 1972 when it came time to decide who was and who wasn't joining the band for their spring tour of Europe the answer was simple - 'Everyone goes.' So off to Europe the extended Grateful Dead family went - forty-plus posse of band members, family, friends, the New Riders and even an LSD chemist named Bear. The triple-L...

Pixies (there's no the 'The') started their ascent into alt-rock wonderhood with Surfer Rosa. No album from the 1980s had a greater influence on the rock sound of the 1990s than this record. Good start Pixies. Nice work.