The Entroporium

To celebrate the return of Elvis Costello and his Spinning Songbook, we’ll take a deep dive into Elvis’s back pages. I trawl through Elvis’s more recent, less widely known albums as well as take a walk through the tons of ‘bonus material’ from the many reissues of his classic LPs. When you get called on stage and the wheel hits on ‘REQUEST!’, you don’t want to be the lame-o who asks for Pump It Up, right?

This episode was recorded on Grounation Day, the 45th anniversary of Ethiopian King Haile Selassie’s visit to Jamaica and one of the most important dates in Rastafarianism. To mark the occasion, I feature great rasta-themed reggae and dub from Studio One, Trojan Records and beyond, including hits from bedrock Jamaican artists like BURNING SPEAR, DENNIS BROWN, THE CONGOS and many more. Plus I try to explain Rastafarian belief and fail miserably.

1981 was the last year the old guard made great records as a new vanguard issued convincing, timeless releases of their own. For its 30th anniversary, this episode digs deep into the year’s key releases and journeys through its indie landscape.

With Steve McQueen in 1986, Prefab Sprout made one of the greatest pop albums ever. (Yes, really!) Fans still wait breathlessly for more of their many unreleased records to drop; two already have.

In this episode, I profile Prefab Sprout and Paddy McAloon, an artist with so much fine unreleased material that he makes Tupac and Nick Drake look like pikers. If you’ve never heard this band and have a yen for 80s music, Steely Dan, indie in the mode of Death Cab For Cutie or Sufjan Stevens, twee pop, Stephen Sondheim and all points in between, you are in for a real treat.

The Rock’N’Roll Nurse took over The Entroporium for a week with a truly geeky look at the music, the manifestos, and the manic energy of a group of bands from the early 1990s lumped together as “Riot Grrrl” by a misinformed media.

In addition to stalwarts BRATMOBILE, BIKINI KILL, and SLEATER-KINNEY, the RNRN will play selections from some of the bands who set the stage for the female-fueled rebellion like X-RAY SPEX, the SLITS, YOKO ONO, the RUNAWAYS, and many others. Revolution Grrrl Style Now!!!

After the splintering effect of punk, the music itself hit a wall; punk had the attitude but not the chops to take pop to the next level. Post-Punk was founded on questioning the tropes of baby boomer rock and roll.

Not every attempt was successful – not by a long shot – but what shook out of this quick flashpoint era of roughly 1979-1983 is an enormously rich treasure trove of experimental music and sound. Come along for a quick tour.

As a Valentine’s Day gift, my wife’s all-time favorite band Duran Duran is the subject of this week’s episode. As always in my artist profiles, I begin with a bunch of roots and influences to set the landscape. Then – believe it or not – I’ve got a ton of rarities, alternate mixes and other Duran-related stuff that might just surprise you. The wife joined me in studio to keep me in line.

In this episode, I explore the cover song through the good graces of my colleagues at The Chemung County Enlightenment Society, a global ragtag group of music dorks that tried to do the impossible last year: narrow down their favorite covers to just 10 each, then post to a shared folder. This show dives deep into that folder and finds treasures both weird and wonderful.

Best known as the leader of Berkeley’s Rancid, Armstrong is one of the biggest-selling and most influential figures in pop-punk over the last 15 years. He has been a key member of Operation Ivy, Rancid, Lars Frederiksen & The Bastards and The Transplants, among others. As a producer and songwriter, he’s been a hit machine for artists better known as popsters than punkers, like Pink and Gwen Stefani.