Playlist

What I've been spinning at home, work, and everywhere else lately...

March 24, 2026

  • Yes - Going For The One
  • King Crimson - THRAK
  • Black Flag - My War
  • Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygene
  • Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
  • Greg Ginn - Let It Burn (Because I Don't Live There Anymore)
  • Yes - Drama
  • Yes - The Yes Album
  • Yes - Relayer

NOTES: A very Yes-heavy day, seemingly. picking random selections from their catalog that probably only the hardcore fans would gravitate to instead of the obvious Fragile or Close To The Edge or the more commercial 90125 or Big Generator. I guess I'm close to being a hardcore fan, then? I paid close attention to Chris Squire's bass playing with all of these albums, especially my umpteeth spin of Drama (where one of the bass parts is played by Trevor Horn on fretless bass, while Squire himself is playing piano). The Jean-Michel Jarre and Mike Oldfield albums, both longtime favorites (especially Tubular Bells which has been with me since childhood), are avatars of the kind of longform compositions I want to try with Toy Piano in the near future. THRAK is actually one of the Crimson albums I am least familiar with (usually I gravitate towards the Discipline and John Wetton [Larks' Tongues In Aspic to Red] era), but it's the Double Trio with the Discipline lineup plus a second bassist and drummer, which makes it appealing. The Greg Ginn album is the first of his solo albums that I had come across when it was a new release and taken home (first on cassette because the store didn't have the CD edition in stock; I ended up ordering that from SST later), and its' my personal favorite of the three he released (preceded by Getting Even and Dick) in a little over a year's time.

March 23, 2026

  • Rudolf Serkin/George Szell & The Cleveland Orchestra - Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 (Great Performances #40)
  • Tangerine Dream - The Bootleg Box Set Vol. 2
  • Metallica - …And Justice For All
  • Metallica - Hardwired…To Self-Destruct
  • Percy Faith - Percy Faith's Greatest Hits
  • 101 Strings Orchestra - Astro Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000
  • Sir Antonio Pappono & The London Symphony Orchestra - Holst: The Planets & Bax: Tintagel
  • Run-DMC - Tougher Than Leather

NOTES: The Serkin/Szell/Cleveland Orch Brahms #2 came up as a recommendation in my Apple Music front page that morning, and somewhere in my own collection I have an original (non-reissue) album of the recording, so I started my work day with it, then went on to a goof chunk of the Tangerine Dream bootleg box (a legit release of shows previously circulated as bootlegs); one of the shows is the full Washington D.C. show that is particially represented on the Encore album. Then a move to Metallica, particially Jason Newstead's infamous album "debut" with the band. You can hear his bass a little (just a little) in the remastered version but it's the fact that the room mics on Lars' drums weren't turned on that kind of ruins the album for me sonically now. Someone sneak a hard drive of the multtrack masters to Stephen Wilson, pronto! A repeat spin of the Percy Faith best-of album on earbuds happened because I was window-shopping for vintl copies of it on Discogs and found out the "stereo" pressings of the album are all "electronically re-channelled", meaning the sessions were recorded and mixed in mono and no true stereo versions exist: fortunately, the stream and CD versions are mono and not fake stereo; I'll have to go with an early mono pressing if I ever go to buy one. The last two times I had listened to the album, I had listened on speakers and not AirPods or headphones, hence I didn't pay attention to the stereo separation or lack thereof. The 101 Strings album is a notorious (in a good way) cult favorite with the Incredibly Strange Music crowd: I can't help but imagine an older adult copuple innocently buying this album thinking it was going to be an easy listening background music album, and instead being faced first with the kind of psychedelic acid rock guitar playing that was on their children's or grandchildren's Jimi Hendrix and Jefforson Airplane albums! I usually go for a recording of Holst's The Planets that has a smovement for Pluto added (composed by Colin Matthews) but I couldn't find one straight away in Apple Classical, so I want for the Pappono/LSO recording (a new release) recommended by the Apple Music algorithm. Run-DMC's Tougher Than Leather is one of my favorite albums of theirs and the first album of theirs I bought on CD back in 1988. Regretabbly, the version of "Beats To The Rhyme" on this album censors the Sam Kinison "dick in your mouth all day" sample. Tougher… is referred to in Apple Music's liner notes as Run-DMC's "hard rock" album and I definitely don't dispute that description one bit -- I think it even eclipses their magnum opus Raising Hell in many spots.

March 22, 2026

  • Percy Faith - Percy Faith's Greatest Hits
  • Ambitious Lovers - Lust
  • Tangerine Dream - Place des Arts, Montreal - April 9th, 1977
  • Tangerine Dream - Raum

NOTES: The second spin of Percy Faith in as many days, as music to code HTML by. Lust is a fine album but I'm not sure how it holds up compared to Envy and Greed right away; Future spins of it may prove me wrong. Live classic TD followed by one of the recent studio albums by the current lineup to close things out on this Sunday afternoon.

March 21, 2026

  • Arto Lindsay and Ambitious Lovers - Envy
  • Ambitious Lovers - Greed
  • Percy Faith - Percy Faith's Greatest Hits

NOTES: A kind of mellower, shorter spin session for Saturday. Ambitious Lovers was a duo led by ex-DNA singer/guitarist Arto Lindsay and keyboardist Peter Scherer, that did more mainstream music (save for Arto's delibrately abrasive guitar. They intended to do seven albums, each named after the seven deadly sins, but only ever got to do three, each one for a different label: Envy was released on Editions EG, Greed on Virgin, and Lust (which I hope to check out later today) on Elektra. None sold very well but are all available on streaming. Arto proves to be a more capable singer than his more anachic style in DNA (a live version of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" performed at DNA's last show, and heard on the vinyl version of the DNA on DNA compilation and on YouTube, sees him nailing the lead vocal very well). The albums are a great blend of synth-pop, funk, and Brazilian music plus Arto's guitar occasionally creeping in. I think it's a crime that these albums didn't get more love in the mainstream. The Percy Faith greatest-hits album from 1960 is, of course, where I got the idea to cover "(Theme From) A Summer Place" on the first Toy Piano album, and it was listening to the original for the first time in a while that made me realize that I had forgotten to modulate keys for the outro, so now I'm tempted to rerecord Percy's arrangement with the proper key change at some point. In fact, I'm listening to the album again while I'm working on the HTML for this page.

March 20, 2026

  • Vladimir Horowitz/Arturo Toscanini & The NBC Orchestra - Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 & Muggorgsky: Pictures At and Exhibition
  • Dryft - Particle
  • Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Pictures At an Exhibition
  • Lou Reed - New York
  • ZZ Top - Tres Hombres
  • U.K. - U.K.
  • Asia - Asia
  • Kraftwerk - The Man-Machine
  • beabadoobee - All I Did Was Dream of You (single)
  • DNA - DNA on DNA

NOTES: Yesterday's listening was all over the place. Going from Horowitz playing under his father-in-law's baton to IDM to prog to Kraftwerk to the queen of bedroom pop to some classic no-wave will do that. The Dryft album is not muchdifferent from what I want to do with Toy Piano this year. It was Horowitz's version of Pictures of an Exhibition that led me to listen to ELP's version for comparison. (SPOILER ALERT: They left a good chunk of it out and added some of their own stuff.) New York was always one of my favorite Lou Reed albums; listening to the lyrics in 2026 makes a lot of this more of a historical document than anything else, especially since some of Lou's real-life targets (Waldheim, Pope John Paul II, Swaggart, and most recently Jesse Jackson) are all gone now, as is Lou himself. It's been a while since I listend to that particular ZZ album. As for the U.K. album... John fucking Wetton. That is all. I had to listen to the first Asia album afterward and consider myself fortunate that I got to see Asia on what wound up being their last tour with Wetton up front (hr died of cancer a year or so afterward). I had to listen to the DNA album via a fan upload on YouTube as it is not available for streaming anywhere else. I really need to check out some of Arto Lindsay's stuff this weekend.

March 19, 2026

  • Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - Greatest Hits
  • Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - Solid Brass
  • Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo
  • Faith No More - Angel Dust
  • Yes - Drama
  • Melvins - Hold It In
  • Melvins - Tres Carbones<

NOTES: The two Herb Alpert compilations don't actually exist on Apple Music, but I have them on vinyl and put playlists together from the original albums so I could hear them in their compilation order. The Mr. Bungle album was actually a first-time listen and led me toward's Mike Patton's true magnum opus with Faith No More right afterward. Not sure why I keep going towards that particular Yes album, but I remember when WVIA premiered that album on George Graham's Mixed Bag program, and "Into The Lens" is a great piece of work. Finished off with two Melvins albums, the first being from when they had Paul Leary and Jeff Pinkus of the Butthole Surfers joim them in the studio, and the second with their "Melvins '83" lineup with their original drummer Mike Dillard behind the kit while Dale Crover plays bass.

March 18, 2026

  • George Szell/The Cleveland Orchestra - George Szell Conducts Richard Strauss
  • George Szell/The Cleveland Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony in E Minor (Great Performances #54)
  • various artists - All Day Beethoven (Apple Music Classical playlist)
  • Jane Remover - ♥ EP
  • Yeule - Yeule EP
  • Yeule - Pathos EP
  • Yeule - Coma EP
  • Henry Rollins - interview on Pwwling The Onion, Ep. 14
  • Jim Cornette - 1989-1990 WVW Deep Dive Omnibus

NOTES: Today started off with some classical: the first Szell selection came up in my recommendations on Apple Music this morning so I went for it, and followed it up with a secon Szell/Cleveland album. The Great Performances series from what was then CBS Masterworks (now Sony Classical) was and still is a great entryway into classical music as it put together 100 essential classical recordings from the Columbia Masterworks catalog; they first came out in the early 80s on vinyl and cassette and then on CD when that format started to become widespread. (Classical music is one of the reasons I wanted a CD player back in 1988.) By the way, the Szell/Strauss CD is also part of the Great Performances series (Volume 8) but the version I streamed here was depicted with the original jacket -- you';; see that a lot on Apple Classical and elsewhere. Then I went with part of the "All Day Beethoven" playlist until I decided on what else to listen to. Jane Remover was a recommendation of "artist similar to Yeule" that Google Gemini made for me. By the way, Jane Remover is actually a biological male that identifies as non-binary and previously identified as a trans woman and sings their songs from a female POV. Confused yet? Thnn I went with Yeule herself -- her early pre-Beyonet EPs that she wrote and recorded in her bedrooms in Singapore and London. I normally don't mention podcasts on here but these two are worth mentioning. Rollins recounts some early stories in his interview tih an Icelandic podcaster (via Zoom from Rollins' home studio in Nashville) while the Jim Cornette episode is one of his omnibus compilations from both of his podcasts, The Jim Cornette Experience and Cornette's Drive-Thru.

March 17, 2026

  • Butthole Surfers - Jet Fighter (single)
  • Tangerine Dream - Pilots of Purple Twilight: The Virgin Recordings 1981-1983
  • The Moog Cookbook - The Moog Cookbook
  • The Moog Cookbook - Ye Olde Space Bande Plays The Classic ROck Hits
  • The Moog Machine - Switched-On Rock

NOTES: Finding out this morning that the Butthole Surfers are putting a new album out this June (specifically, this June 26 -- my wedding anniversary) -- well, relatively new as some of the songs appear to be new recordings of songs from their previous album, Weird Revolution. No complaints here. Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary had mentioned in interviews early last year when Matador reissued their pre-Capitol back catalog that they didn't intend to do any reunion shows... only to play a couple of reunion shows later that year in support of a documentary about them. Now a new album is forthcoming.... only its not a new album, its the original version of Weird Revolution that Capitol rejected in the late 90's; Now its coming out officially after being bootlegged for so long. Fine by me. Then I proceeded on to my main listening for the work day: an entire box set of Tangerine Dream music, over seven hours worth, and boy did it make the work day go by! Closed out the day with some Moogsploitation recordings: the two brilliant and clever albums by the project formed by two ex-Jellyfish members, followed by a predecessor done for Columbia Records back in 1970. Just imagine how much more milepage one could get out of doing some "Switched-On" covers albums... Hmmmm...

March 16, 2026

  • Rob Zombie - The Sinister Urge
  • Rob Zombie - Educated Horses
  • Rob Zombie - Hellbilly Deluxe II (Special Edition)
  • Rob Zombie - The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser
  • Rob Zombie - Venemous Rat Regeneration Vendor
  • Rob Zombie - The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy
  • Rob Zombie - The Great Satan
  • Tom Jones - Tom
  • Melvins - Working For God
  • Melvins - Pinkus Abortion Technician

NOTES: - This day seemed like a Rob Zombie day so I binged most of his discography (I'd already spun Hellbilly Deluxe and its companion remix album Amercian Made Music TO Strip By a few weeks ago after giving The Great Satan, his newest album, its first listen on its release day). Educated Horses had a rather unique progression from his first two albums when John 5 joined the band beforehand, and it made for fine listening. With John 5 replacing Mick Mars in Mötley Crüe, that left an opportunity for Zombie's original guitarist and bassist, Mike Riggz and Rob "Blashko" Nicholson, to return to the fold and bring an old school feel back to Mr. Zombie's music for the new album (which is quite excellent). The Tom Jones album was an old favorite from early childhood: the A-side is The Voice as blue-eyed soul singer ("I Can't Turn You Loose". "I Thank You". and the bsst recorded version of "Sugar Sugar" ever) and the B-side is The Voice as baladeer (including the single "Without Love" and a great turn on "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"). Two random Melvins albums closed out the day: Working For God has their savage versions of The Beach Boys' "I Get Around" (here repurposed as "I Fuck Around") and Nilsson's "Youre Breaking My Heart", infamous for it's use of "fuck you"'s in the chorus about 35 years before Cee-Lo Brown got a song with that phrase into the Billboard Top 40. Pinkus... sees a two-bass lineup of the band with Jeff Pinkus of Butthole Surfers fame playing alongside still-current Melvins four-stringer Steven McDonald on an album that begins and ends with Buttholes covers of "Moving To Florida" (mashed up with The James Gang's "Stop") and "Graveyard".

March 14, 2026

  • Cluster - Cluster 71
  • Harmonia - Music Von Harmonia
  • Tangerine Dream - Zeit

NOTES: A little bit of early Krautrock and one of Tangerine Dream's "Pink Years" albums. The "Pink Years" were from when they were on the German label Ohr for their first four albums, before they signed to Virgin. There's a four-CD box set on Esoteric/Cherry Red that covers those four albums and makes for a nice compliment to the two Virgin box sets of the albums that followed.

March 13, 2026

  • Sawteeth - 東風
  • Dryft - Low Future (single)
  • Quartz - Interloper
  • Enei - Countdown
  • Form Twenty-Nine - Deep Into The Gully Run
  • Martin Denny - Exotic Moog
  • Marty Friedman/Jason Becker Cacophony - Speed Metal Symphony
  • Tangerine Dream - Le Parc
  • Tangerine Dream - Exit
  • Tangerine Dream - Hyperborea

NOTES: The first album had come up as an algorhythmic recommendation on YouTube, and I ended up finding it on both Bandcamp and Apple Music before long -- great drum'n'bass/IDM from South Korea (even though the album has a Japanese title). Then, with a little help from Google Gemini, led me to queue up some other recent drum'n'bass releases. The Cacophony album I had brought up later because my Friend Nik Cameron had about it on one of his two music podcasts, but I lasted one song and wasn't feeling the album -- no offense to either Marty or Jason (and God bless the latter because of how long he's survived with ALS) because I have the iTunes files of the album and maybe a phsuical copy somewhere but this was not clicking with me that day. I still listed it out of fairness. The three Tangerine Dream albums were winddown selections near the end of the evening; I have the first two of them on vinyl (original US pressings on Relativity and Elektra respectively) but not the third, which I only have physically as part of the second Virgin Records box set Pilots of Purple Twilight.

March 12, 2026

  • Depeche Mode - Violator
  • Depeche Mode - Songs of Faith and Devotion
  • John Foxx - Metamatic

NOTES: Almost marathonned more than those two Depeche Mode albums but ended up switching first to the John Foxx album and then to a couple of podcasts for the balance of the work day.

March 11, 2026

  • Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Get Happy!!
  • LFO - Frequencies
  • Adrian Belew - The Lone Rhino
  • Brian Eno & David Byrne My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
  • 808 State - ex:el
  • Von Südenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions
  • The Fall - New Facts Emerge

NOTES: A more random selection on this day. Get Happy!! was the first Elvis Costello album I had ever bought, although I'd been aware of the man since he first became visible on the scene in 1977. Elvis Costello made it all right to be a geeky-looking guy with glasses and a Fender guitar. The LFO album was a recent discovery while mining lists of classic electronic albums for inspiration. The Eno/Byrne album wasn't my first choice to listen to but apparently Mr. Eno may have initiated a transfer of his back catalog from Virgin/Universal to his own label because I wanted to listen to Here Come The Warm Jets or Another Green World instead. Time to dig for the CDs and do some 24/48 FLAC rips...

March 10, 2026

  • Butthole Surfers - Brown Reason To Live/Live PCPPEP CD
  • Butthole Surfers - Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac
  • Butthole Surfers - Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis (EP)
  • Butthole Surfers - Rembrant Pussyhorse
  • Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technicians
  • Butthole Surfers - Hairway To Steven
  • Butthole Surfers - Pioughd + Widowmaker
  • Scratch Acid - S/T EP
  • Scratch Acid - Just Keep Eating

NOTES: An all-freaky-80s-Texas-alternative-bands day at work. Rembrandt Pussyhorse was the first Butthole Surfers album I ever bought -- $6 direct from Touch And Go Records (along with the first Meatmen LP We're The Meatmen... And You Suck!), and that one as well as Locust Abortion Technician are engraved in my DNA forever. For years I had dealt with a copied cassette of Locust... until I bought the Touch And Go CD years later. The rest of their pre-Capitol catalog I would acquire on Touch And Go's CD releases and ALternative Tentacles' repressings of their first two EPs until the Buttholes first reissued their back catalog themselves on their own Latino Buggerveil label and I grabbed the CD of the first two EPs. Since then I've acquired the Latino Buggerveil vinyl represses of Locust... and Hairway To Steven but not the Matador reissues... yet. Scratch Acid I had known of from around the same time but never listened to them until I got their The Greatest Gift compilation CD; Touch And Go have since separated all of the titles represented on that disc and "reissued" them to the download and streaming platforms individually, and reissued them on vinyl. I just looked at Touch And Go's website... how did I miss that Scratch Acid vinyl box set?!?

March 9, 2026

  • Le Orme - Contr[[unti
  • Area - Crac
  • Quella Vecchia Locanda - Quella Vecchia Locanda
  • Biglietto per l'inferno - Biglietto per l'inferno
  • Quella Vecchia Locanda - Il Tempo Della Diola
  • Il Balletto Di Bronzo - Ys
  • King Crimson - Beat
  • Van Der Graff Generator - Pawn Hearts
  • Fugazi - Albini Sessions
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers - Unlimited Love
  • Tangerine Dream - Poland: The Warsaw Concert

NOTES: This past Monday morning seemed like it calledf for some Italian prog and that's what I went for for most of the day, before switching to Crimson and VDGG. The Crimson album was one of the first two I had gotten on my birthday the year of Beat's release; the other was their second album In The Wake Of Poseidon. It was a bit of a mindfucl to realize that this was the same band, eleven years apart. I had no inkling of their prog rock past and had associated Robert Fripp with the new wave because of his The League of Gentlemen album and his associations with Blondie and David Bowie. The Fugazi release is an official one, not a bootleg: Dischord Records put the album -- the original version of In On The Killtaker recorded at Steve Albini's home studio in Chicago, befroe he opened up Electrical Audio after his mid-90's profile raised thanks to Nirvana and a few others -- on Bandcamp Friday for March 2025 with the proceeds going to a favorite charity of Albini's. I hadn't listened to the Chili Peppers album much since it first was released (I bought the double vinyl the day it dropped but on this day went for the lossless Apple Music stream because I was at work) but was quite amazed at Anthony Kiedis' vocals on the album; I'd have to look back at the albums before this one but they are definitely the best vocals I'd heard from him, ever. I'd say ignore their ex-producer's accusations of Kideis being tonedeaf as the disgruntled grumbling of someone who wishes he hadn't been passed over for Rick Rubin when they did Bloodsugarsexmagik.

March 6, 2026

  • Morrissey - Make-Up Is A Lie
  • Morrissey - Viva Hate
  • The Smiths - Hatful Of Hollow
  • The Smiths - The World Won't Listen
  • Morrissey - World Peace Is None Of Your Business
  • Morrissey - California Son
  • Tangerine Dream - Phaedra
  • Devo - Oh No! It's Devo
  • John Foxx - Metamatic

NOTES: Make-Uo Is A Lie dropped today and honestly, I think it's the best album that Morrissey has done since World Peace Is None Of Your Business, which I hope gets reissued soon now that Morrissey has managed to regain the license from Harvest/Capitol. Moz has always been a confrontational provacateur, so it's not hard for me to take many of hsi comments as either sarcasm or dark humor. It was hilarious to see some assholes acuse Moz of being a racist when he was covering Bob Dylan's anti-racist song "Only A Pawn In The Game" on California Son, his fine covers album. World Peace... I had listened to via the purchased AAC files from iTunes; I may have to pull out my double vinyl of the album and do a needle drop if I want to hear it in lossless before any legit reissue happens. Tangerine Dream... need I say more? I could put on their In Search of Hades or Pilots of Purple Twilight box sets of their Virgin Records output at the start of the workday and bliss out on the synthy goodness while at my desk. The Devo album here is one of my favorities of theirs. The John Foxx album is from the early 80s but I didn't discover it until 2020; If I had known the album existed back then and heard it, it would have been a lifetime favorite - beautifully mimimal electronic pop with only a bass guitar and an occasional upright piano interrupting.

March 5, 2026

  • Raccomandata Ricevuta Ritorno - Per... Un Mondo Di Cristallo
  • Banco del Mutuo Soccorsi - Darwin!
  • Latte E Mille - Papillon
  • Osanna - Palepoli
  • Il Balletto Di Bronzo - Ys
  • Styx - Cornerstone
  • Split Enz - True Colors
  • Robert Plant - Now And Zen
  • Yes - Union

NOTES: Mostly an Italian prog day today (thank you, Dereck Higgins) until I started to get a little bit random. All of those titles are on the streaming services and worth checking out -- the Raccomandata Ricevuta Ritorno and Il Balletto Di Bronzo albums are particular favorites of mine. I get a lot of Yes vibes from the Il Balletto Di Bronzo record in particular. The last time I listened to that Styx album was when I played my vinyl copy when I was still in junior high school. Unfortunately, outside of the single "Babe", most of this album didn't seem to age well with me, compared with all of the new wave and post-punk stuff I was diving into back then and still enjoy to the fullest today. James "J.T." Young's paean to Ted Kennedy, "Eddie", in particular, really stinks up the place considering most of the crap we ended up dealing with behind the Resolute Desk between 1981 and 1992... and beyond. Hadn't listened to either the Split Enz or the Robert Plant albums in a long time and they still hold up. The Robert Plant album was one of my earliest CD acquisitions - I think I got my copy in my intro pack from Columbia House. The Yes album is good on its own despite its reputation amongst even the eight band members on it (Rick Wakeman famously refers to it as Onion) and the fact that the producer they used (Jonathan Elias, who as penance should have been fired and forced to spend the rest of his working life as a coffee boy for a real record producer like Rick Rubin or Bob Rock) had snuck a bunch of session musicians onto the record to replace Steve Howe's and Rick Wakeman's parts (and honestly, why was that done?!?.)