COUNTDOWN TO TRANSMISSION, This Is The Reason DJing On KOOP Radio 91.7FM 24-3-23
Setlist From My Guest Slot On Bloodstains From The Grave
One suburban afternoon in the last century, I discovered Unwound, Tom Waits, Shellac, Sebadoh, Built To Spill and the Palace Brothers. I discovered them one after the other, in the length of time it took for the DJ to spin them on WKDU 91.7FM (the longest-running non-commercial radio station in the country).
Some quantum transmission, Subscriber. The medium may be the message but I’ve maintained a dumb sense of wonder that sound can be invisible. That the cutting-edge kill it music I needed so bad could scale buildings, cross rooftops, climb hill and valley and coarse through city streets to reach me where I was dying a slow death in the suburbs. I’m a transmission junkie, a communicator; I’m in love with that ON AIR light and the hot medium of radio!
This is the first installment of COUNTDOWN TO TRANSMISSION, an almost-weekly anthology of setlists from shows I appeared on, craned that boom mic to my lips and sent out a signal to that lost kid to make him know that rock and roll can never die.
BLOODSTAINS FROM THE GRAVE WITH THE REASON & JULIAN ISAAC ROOT
24-3-23
JULIAN ISAAC ROOT (JIR): To be an 18-year-old Philly punk rocker in 2005 meant you were gonna see the Low Budgets every weekend. The Low Budgets were something that oozed from the couch on some West Philly porch where a squatter named “Rob Shit” was sleeping. Something that tasted like the ass of a Hurricane 40-ounce left in the sun at FDR park all weekend. Something that smelled like a wet dog wearing old leather. Spawned from two original members of the Dead Milkmen, the Low Budgets sounded like your buddies tearing out the guts of an abandoned warehouse, telling dirty jokes and blasting The Cramps.I ain’t got much money so I’m feeling tense,
hey, Mr. Shopkeeper…what can I get for fiddy cents?!Rest assured Mr. Shopkeeper was surely working the register of Fu-Wah at 47th and Baltimore. After all, the greasy spoon next door (Lee’s) had a framed copy of one of the band’s LPs, which features a photo of Chris and the boys stuffing their faces with tofu cheesesteaks from West Philly’s Phinest.
“Problems” was the first hardcore song I ever heard, through my dad’s hifi in my mom’s living room. The den was a converted garage, plenty of room to start a circle pit with my homie. It was the fastest music I ever heard and the singer had had enough; problems with his teachers who say he’s failing and he don’t know what to do! I could relate to that as a 13-year-old and I still can.
Life Sentence was produced by members of Zoetrope who “played a style of speed metal that bordered on thrash, which they referred to as "street metal."
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