The Entroporium

The Beatles have an avant-garde side that still remains hidden to the casual fan, a good trick considering their ubiquity. The vaults are piled high with bizarre recordings that are frankly better off left there.

In this episode, I introduce some of The Beatles’ strangest recordings – both as a band and as solo artists. Some of these are pretty great, others are just about unlistenable. As an impressionable youth, I took the time to listen to these – and now my suffering and fanaticism can be your quick & dirty guide to the Fab Four’s weird side.

This week my colleague Cormac of the great Phonographic Funhouse and his recruited sidekick Rob E. Davis sat in the DJ’s seat and brought in a selection of pre-1950 music you will not soon forget. Not only will you find jazz & pop hits here from before World War II, but also incredible psychedelic sides from Turkey, Bali and beyond.

In two hours, I showcase some of GHS’s best-loved recordings, the 60s Black Revolutionary rhetoric that gave rise to his sound and the contemporary artists who call themselves his followers.

Celebrating Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday, we present his long, winding musical history through the prism of unreleased bootleg recordings. For serious Dylan fans, illicit recordings are often just as rewarding as the legitimate ones. This show goes through a sampling of the best available.

In this episode, I take on the nearly 50-year career of one of America’s all-time great artists bar none: Miles Davis. Following his path and making sense of the literally thousands of records available can be tough for a neophyte. In two packed hours, I pull out some highlights that will give some hints for finding your way in to Miles’ daunting catalog.

Two hours of fun & frolic to celebrate the End Of The World, coming May 21. Pop’s greatest moments of apocalypse, terror, rapture and nuclear fear.

First in a proposed occasional series, this episode dives deep into one of the most unique-sounding and enduring albums of the last 25 years. Starting with the beat that launched a million hip-hop sides, I examine how Public Enemy mixed history, revolution and musique concrete to create a masterpiece.

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.