Rocket Ship Ska Trip

5/2/13 in a nutshell…

We noticed The Night Sky Turning Blue during the Home Stretch, and we broke out our favorite Buford O’Sullivan song, which will have greater longevity on this year’s playlists due to the extra hour we didn’t have at this time last year. The 5(+1)@5:05 was strictly East Coast-themed, and opened with Boston greats The Void Union and Bim Skala Bim, and also included New York legends The Toasters. Margherita’s “Tu Sei Pallido”, one of two Italian “Lollipops” in our possession (the other being the feisty Rita Pavone’s), comes from a record whose overly long title misidentifies the geographical origin-point of “Ska” (U.S.A. according to the 45 sleeve… ), but nevertheless isn’t actually a bad version of the song. Sherwood changed his meteorological pitch up, observing the wet weather with Ken Nordine (“Looks Like It’s Going to Rain”) instead of the Soil & “Pimp”/Shiina Ringo collab usually heard here when we’re “feelin’ a change in the air”. Ringo still mentioned rain, though… it turns up in her “Suberidai”, which we heard just before Walter Wanderley launched into “Song of the Jet”. May’s “calendar album” tracks were Emil Richards’ “Emerald” and “Flower Society” by the psychedelically percussive Hal Blaine. The “Ooh” spun ska oldies mostly Jamaican, but also from Mexico (Toño Quirazco), South Africa (Soweto Stokvel Septette), the US (Lester Lanin) and the UK (Colonel Elliott & the Lunatics). Tune in… and stay tuned!

4/18/13 in a nutshell…

This week, let’s fast-forward to the Home Stretch. 2 weeks ago, due to the lack of a 5@5:05, we promised skassengers a 5×2@5:05 the following week, which we didn’t actually deliver last week. So this week, we decided that the whole Home Stretch (except for the Mutant Frogs bumpers and, of course, of course, “The End”) would be Japanese ska, or as we like to say around here, “Skapanese”, including the J-Lollipop unwrapped by Mie Nakao, whose version of “My Boy” manages to liberally reference that other Lollipop, the one by The Chordettes. In a then-future century, an outfit called The Dreamlets would do likewise, but this week we spun their “Nina”, inspired as we were by Sherwood B. Funn’s unplanned airing of Nina Hagen’s delightful “Flying Saucers”. Another Home Stretch highlight: a hat-trick of Runa Miyoshida goodies, one each from her first three Ska Flavor albums, albeit not in numerical order. But back to Sherwood… Imagine Herbie Hancock’s vocoderized voice scatting along with Grappelli and Reinhardt over spaciously chilled trip-hop beatz, and you’ve pretty much got the gist of “Star Scat”, a truly hallounginogenic confection from electro-swingers Caravan Palace. Don’t worry, you’re just hearing things… and I’m spinnin’em! While in Sherwood’s orbit, Shiina Ringo gave us a current weather report (“Rain’s a-comin’ down, rain’s a-comin’ deaaownn…”) while Weather Report gave us Wayne Shorter’s “When It Was Now”. Seriously, as I type this up, rain’s still a-comin’ deeaaoowwnnnn… let’s make it fly back up as we reverse the flow of time and back up into the “Ooh”… what a well-rounded selection of fine old ska goodies we have here, ranging from Clue J. to Stranger & Patsy, from The Dragonaires to The Upsetters. No real theme except, “Ooh, I like this one… and this one… and hold on, we haven’t heard that in a while!” Y’know… wingin’ it. Tune in… and stay tuned!

4/4 in a nutshell…

Ooh! Our Pledge Drive week 1 edition got off to a slightly glitchy start when a deck locked-up in the middle of “Jamaica Ska”, West Side Symphony Steel Orchestra style. Funny, one of our other identical decks played it flawlessly just a few minutes later! It was part of a tribute to the Byron Lee hit that included the song it was modeled on, Marv Johnson’s “Come On and Stop”. We bumpered an early version of a Mutant Frogs thing we’re calling “NASKA Dub”, and hunting around on YouTube yielded an unreleased Don Drummond jam called “Port Royal”. Sherwood bumpered a new Froggie mix of various samples of interplanetary electromagnetic frequencies received by NASA satellites, called… what else? “Interplanetary Frequencies”. This week’s Planet also included Arthur Lyman, The Peanuts, Fred Katz and a guy he used to provide musical backing for, Ken Nordine. Kicking off the Home Stretch, The Ska-Men, featuring an uncredited Ska-Woman, delivered the GotchaSKAvered Lollipop-of-the-Week, and we had the RSST debut of a new Caro Emerald remix by somebody named Lokee. If we had a 5@5:05 planned, it went right down a Pledge Drive memory hole, so we’ll do a 5×2 next week! Tune in… and Stay Tuned.

3/21 in a nutshell…

My, my, what a diverse “Ooh” we have this week! In the first four tracks alone, we have U.S. ’60s ska from Tracey Dey (the Bob Crewe-produced “Ska Doo-Dee-Yah”), a lost-decade British goodie from ’68 (the Trojan All Stars’ “Yorkie Special”), a straight-up Skatalites-propelled Johnny “Dizzy” Moore cut from the Top Deck sessions, and some sunshine rocksteady by Chinese singer (and not Chinese-Jamaican, from what I read online) Stephen Cheng, backed by Byron Lee & the Dragonaires. Always together, even if I do quote the song title directly in that assessment! Sherwood, meanwhile, marks the Voovie Doo debut of Johnny Guitar, and we don’t mean Mr. Watson! This Thai string-slinger’s mid-‘60s Lucky Bamboo release Suphan Nahong yields the slow, atmospherically-percussive “Sri Nuon” this week, part of a SE-Asian electric-guitar-exotica set also involving HK’s The Quests (listen for the lush blend of organ and sitars here!), Singapore’s legendary Shadows-influenced The Stylers and the cha-cha-driven All Star Orchestra. GotchaSKAvered’s Lollipop-of-the-Week kicks off the Home Stretch with none other than Teresa Brewer, and single-digit (Fahrenheit) winter chill inspired us to mix up a set of tunes we usually save for late December, including The Dualers’ “Jack Frost” and Gichy Dan’s “Winter on Riverside Drive”. The 5@5:05 recycled an old Ska Beatles set featuring The Brass Circus (“Strawberry Fields Forever”) and Ernest Ranglin (“You Won’t See Me”), among others, and then it was all-over-the-map time (including Jimmy Cliff’s “One More” and Tim “Timebomb” Armstrong covering “Too Much Pressure”, and by the way absolutely DO check out the eclectic treasure trove of online “45s” Tim and friends have posted to YouTube!) ‘Til next time, tune in… and stay tuned!