The Way Podcast: August 23rd, 2012; Outlaw Pop/Rock

On tonight's episode of the Way I play some of my favorite songs about "outlaws" (still on an Old West kick apparently). Songs range from the Byrd's "Pretty Boy Floyd" to Dylan's "Drifter's Escape", the Bobby Fuller Four's classic crime anthem "I Fought The Law" and Old West-Retropop from Harper's Bizarre. A rare Monkees outtake is also included with Michael Nesmith's somber country-rock ballad "Nine Times Blue". The music here is mostly acoustic and has a distinct rustic and pastoral quality. Most of the tunes were recorded from the early to mid sixties and not all are explicity about outlaws, but most of lyrics and music suggest characters, experiences and stories from dusty old Southwestern towns. Click the link below to listen to stream the podcast or right-click the link and press "save link as..." to download it in .mp3 format to your computer. The show starts in at about the 3 minute mark. Enjoy:

The Way: August 23rd

The Way Podcast: 8/16; The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Mash-Up/Joe Strummer's "Walker"

In keeping with the theme of last week's show, this week I explore the ultimate Western soundtrack, Ennio Morricone's iconic score for Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly but with a new twist. Instead of relying on the original theatrical trailers for dialogue to superimpose on to the music, I used the actual film for the source of all the dialogue and sound effects. I basically mixed the entire set live on the fly so there are some moments where there is some clashing audio, but I'm mostly pleased with the result. The mash-up took up about the first half-hour of the show and the rest of the show I played tracks from Joe Strummer's soundtrack for Alex Cox's '87 Neo-Western Walker. Strummer's soundtrack is rustic and melancholy and often very pretty, clearly influenced by Dylan's soundtrack for Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The show is a bit different from what I've done in the past, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless, it was a fun challenge for me. Listen to the stream by clicking the link below and right click and hit "Save As" to download it. Enjoy!

The Way, August 16th

The Way Podcast: August 10th; Art-Western Soundtracks

Probably one of my favorite shows I've done recently, and one of the more "conceptual" shows I've attempted, this week's episode was dedicated to my some of my favorite Western movie scores from the 60s and 70s. I interspersed each set of three film scores with bits of dialouge from the original theatrical trailers from the movies and try to give some background on the songs being played and what kind of scenes the songs were used in. The movies chosen were "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid", with a score from Burt Bacharach, "Once Upon A Time In The West", with a score from Ennio Morricone and my personal favorite movie and score, "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid", with a beautiful soundtrack from Bob Dylan. The link to stream the podcast is below, enjoy!

The Way: August 10th, 2012

The Way Podcast: 8/2/2012, "Cosmic Americana" A Sampler of Rootsy California Psychedelia

On this week's show I provide a sampler of what I refer to as "Cosmic American Music", a term first coined by the late Gram Parsons in reference to his band the Flying Burrito Brothers. While I think it's a good description of that band, I also think it's a label that fits a lot of other Los Angeles and California based pop/rock acts that successfully merged elements of country, rock 'n roll and psychedelia. I played some of my favorite latter-day Byrds and Moby Grape tracks and also some RARE Curt Boettcher songs that were originally intended for a solo album he would have released on the ill-fated Together Records label, that he and Gary Usher had founded in 1969. The tracks would later end up on the Curt Boettcher compilation "Misty Mirage". To listen to the podcast, click the link below:

The Way: August 2nd, 2012