Monday, November 10
Between 1993 and 1997, the Kansas City, Missouri band Boys Life gigged extensively and released two albums and a series of EPs and singles. When the group was contacted by the reissue label Numero Group about a career retrospective box set, the group had not recorded any material in nearly 30 years. After the release of that set, titled Home Is A Highway, the band reunited for a series of shows. Determined not to let their early recordings not be the last music fans heard from the outfit, vocalist/guitarist Brandon Butler suggested recording new material. The result is the four-song EP Ordinary Wars. We’ll hear music from that release as well as selections from the newly expanded 1984 album by The Replacements, Let It Be.
Tuesday, November 11
We’ll have music for Veterans Day on this episode from Bill Withers, Drive-By Truckers, John Prine, Ruthie Foster, Richard Thompson, and more.
Wednesday, November 12
Listen for music from the new release by The Last Dinner Party, From The Pyre, plus selections from Valerian Tea, the new effort from the San Francisco Bay Area group Magic Fig.
Thursday, November 13
Though the band Hüsker Dü broke up less than a decade after it formed in St. Paul, Minnesota, when hometown friends Greg Norton and Grant Hart met New York state transplant Bob Mould, the trio was never less than prolific and perhaps never more prolific than in the years 1984 and 1985. In 1984 they issued the concept LP Zen Arcade, which won them critical acclaim and wider notice. By early 1985, they had released the equally impressive New Day Rising and in the spring of that year they’d track their final album for the SST label, Flip Your Wig, before returning to the studio at the end of the year to record their major label debut, Candy Apple Grey, which would appear in stores a mere 14 months after New Day Rising.
Additionally, the band performed concerts well into the triple digits, including a January ’85 show at the Minneapolis venue First Avenue. Several recordings from that time frame comprise the new live box set, 1985: The Miracle Year.
We’ll hear selections from that release as well as music from late Hüsker Dü co-founder Grand Hart’s 1988 EP, 2541. The title cut is a song that Mould had rejected for the New Day Rising sessions and which he suggested in his 2011 memoir, See A Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, may have been the beginning of the end of his working relationship with Hart. Despite Mould’s reluctance to record the song, it has been covered by a wide range of artists and is perhaps Hart’s most beloved composition.
Friday, November 14
Released in 1973, The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get is the second album from guitar legend Joe Walsh and is notable for the inclusion of his classic rock radio staple “Rocky Mountain Way” as well as pieces such as “Meadows” and “Wolf,” which arguably inspired the more melodic elements of thrash metal when the genre emerged in the 1980s. We’ll hear selections from this LP on this episode as well as music from the new deluxe edition of the 1969 Ten Years After album Ssssh.
Saturday, November 15
Released in 1989, 11 was the third album from New Jersey’s Smithereens. Taking its name from the Rat Pack film Ocean’s Eleven, the record included a number of songs that were inescapable in the months after the album’s release as the group became a favorite of rock radio programmers. Those songs included “Blues Before and After” and “A Girl Like You,” which had been written for the Cameron Crowe film Say Anything but ultimately rejected. We’ll hear music from that release as well as selections from the expanded edition of the Replacements album Don’t Tell A Soul, including the non-LP track “Portland,” an open apology to the Oregon city where the Minneapolis quartet delivered one of its most notorious shambolic shows.
