Rockaliser Radio 2: Rockcast of Consensus

Recalling vintage 1994-era Siskel & Ebert, your Rockaliser writers have independently cast the same vote for 2011's best album, and it's not what you think...unless you've browsed through this blog in the past week and read our lists in written form, here and here--then you know it's Destroyer's Kaputt.

As with last year, I invited my esteemed colleague onto my weekly radio show, which broadcasts Sunday nights live from the Radiohive studios in Manhattan, to talk about our favorite music of the year. Once again it was an excellent discussion, and apart from a momentary Internet shortage toward the end there were fewer technical errors this time around (errors of judgment, on the other hand, still number plenty). Feel free to stream our live "Rockcast" (as we have taken to calling it) below. It's an entertaining two-hour listen, with a murderer's row of high-quality music selections. How much of our discussion will be devoted to Bun B? Will your host be able to summon more precise language to convey music he likes than "hardcore rockin' beats"? Is the Spinal Tap reference at the beginning intentional? And how will either of us justify the lack of SuperHeavy commentary? None of these questions will be answered, befitting the uncertainty of today's troubled economic climate [\desperate end-of-year think piece].

An mp3 of the Rockcast is also available here. For convenience, our respective lists sans commentary:

Aaron M.'s Favorite Music of 2011

1. Destroyer, Kaputt

2. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life

3. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Belong

4. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake

5. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy

6. Shabazz Palaces, Black Up

7. Wye Oak, Civilian

8. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva

9. Low, C'mon

10. Van Hunt, What Were You Hoping For?

Nathan S.'s Favorite Music of 2011

1. Destroyer, Kaputt

2. Raphael Saadiq, Stone Rollin'

3. DJ Quik, The Book of David

4. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva

5. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life

6. Blouse, Blouse

7. Boris, New Album

8. A$AP Rocky, LiveLoveA$AP

9. Mutemath, Odd Soul

10. Yuck, Yuck

Thanks to my colleague for an excellent conversation, and for introducing me to a few artists (Van Hunt, Shabazz Palaces) who would have otherwise slipped past my radar. Thus endeth the season of Rockaliser EOY festivities--time to get on to some real writing!

Rockaliser Radio

The Pazz & Jop poll came out a few days ago, but here's what you've really been waiting for: our first Rockaliser End-Of-Year Radio Rockcast (Feat. Polite Convo, Minor Disagreements & Technical Incompetence). Broadcast from the offices of alternative media collective Radiohive, Aaron Mendelson and I discuss our Top 10 lists, share the love for Grinderman and Big Boi, compare the relative merits of Trill OG vs. Bun B on other people's albums, laugh once more at the stupidity of Kanye's album titles, and throw in a few easy barbs at Eric Clapton for no discernible reason:


You can download the show here. My list in written form is here; Aaron's is here. Bonus: list number-crunching.

Thanks to Juell S. for sharing the Radiohive studio and my esteemed colleague for editing numerous cuing mistakes and long, uncomfortable silences. To our readers: would you like to see more of this in the future? Let us know--we do have the technology.

In case you're wondering, my voice does sound that distorted in real life.

Yo G Stick A Fucking Tape In It

Looks like Minneapolis' hip-hop/R&B radio station B96 has flipped formats, and is now a Top 40 station called 96.3 Now. I was listening to it this morning, and thought something sounded different. The impetus, apparently, was "market research showing music tastes have changed in the past year." The writing on the wall doesn't look good:

At noon Wednesday B96 became the new "96.3 Now", and played it's first song of the new format, Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" (link)

And you know how we feel about that one. It seems like a bizarre move, given that KDWB seems to have the Twin Cities Top 40 market on lockdown. 96.3's Program Director notes, with no apparent irony, that KDWB "play a lot of what I like to call 'Disney pop'." Like Miley Cyrus! Perhaps that first song was an insult on the airwaves, a negative statement of purpose? He continues: "We won't play that." Oh.

I wasn't a huge B96 partisan, but whenever I was in a car (I don't own one), that was my defualt station. The Hip-Hop/R&B charts have some terrible stuff on them, obviously, but they served a niche in the Twin Cities and at least their DJs had discernible personalities. DJ Peter Parker, Tony Fly, The Queen Bee, and Zany K the Minnesota Madman were characters. Occasionally, they gave exposure to local artists for an audience that doesn't listen to The Current (our NPR-run, indieish station). Mostly, I'll miss their Back In The Day Cafe, an hour-long afternoon block of older jams. They played a lot of G-Funk. Some bite size thoughts follow.

Possibly symbolic but I'm not sure how: B96 switched formats a day after the death of Carl Pohlad, who owns the Twins, used to own the Vikings, and owns Northern Lights Broadcasting, parent company of new 96.3 Now.

My now-abandoned thesis about B96: the station was an excellent example of the workings of contemporary culture and capitalism. The line between its content and advertising was thin when in existed at all, with lyrics and banter rife with allusions to record labels, brands, and other goods, and ads, in large part for night clubs and upcoming concerts, that mimiced the vocals and production of the station's programming. Hype men don't get much work on modern rap records, but they seem to be doing gangbusters in the world of commercial voice-overs. In a weird way there was something symbiotic about it, placing a music very much about product-pushing and salesmanship (i.e. Rick Ross, Young Jeezy) in a context where it was acknowledged as the commodity it is alongside hamburgers and the club experience.

Final two thoughts of a rambling post: Ice Cube's "Turn Off The Radio" is once again vindicated (though I remember B96 dutifully spinning his new singles, and they played "It Was A Good Day" all the time), and that there is a weird racial aspect to this, that what it came down to was that the certainly not-black suits at Northern Lights Broadcasting thought that reaching a whiter audience would be more profitable.