The Little Lighthouse

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Funkpreacher On-Line

My friend Nils who had his debut at The Little Lighthouse in November, has his own radio show on KLSU now. It's called Funkpreacher and it runs every Saturday evening from 8 to 10pm. If you miss it, don't be too sad, he's also putting the most recent show on the web at www.funkpreacher.net.

Fight the law, Sonny!

I Fought The Law Used In RIAA Campaign

This came as a shock to me. I know RIAA would sell their mothers if they could earn some money out of them, and it doesn't surprise me that they used one of the greatest rock'n'roll songs in their campaign. What's puzzling is that somebody who owns rights to this song approved it. I really hope Sonny Curtis who wrote the song will stand up against this abuse. We featured this song as volume one in our series of rock'n'roll anthems where we play one hour (or in case of Louie Louie two hours) of the same song in different versions from different rock'n'roll eras.

Fantasporto
trademark is cute!

Film festival in Porto

There's a cool film festival happening these days in Porto. The festival is called Fantasporto and it has a long tradition. It originated as a science fiction and horror festival, but as the time went by, they just became a film festival with preference on fantasy movies, not necessarily concentrating on SF. Festival program is very rich, they are showing movies from all over the world with different topics. They will all compete for the grand prix. There is also a short film and documentaries section and a nice retrospective selection of trash horror films form the past - Boris Karloff, Elvira, Lucio Fulci and Herschell Lewis. The Lewis guy is a famous trash horror guy, the author of ore Gore Girls cycle. He also made a big influence on John Waters.

Standing In The Shadows of Motown

James Jamerson -
shadow behind the
Motown magic

That's the first movie I went to see at Fantasporto. It's a documentary that depicts the famous record label, but instead centering their story on Marvin Gaye, Supremes, Four Tops or any other of the immediate stars or producers and songwriters, they centered the story on the band that backed up all these singers. So if you asked yourself why all the Motown songs have that same powerful beat, the answer is The Funk Brothers - that's how they called themselves. It's a very nice, touching story told by the surviving members. Most of these musicians are extremely skillful jazz musicians, world class. They went to work to Motown for daily bread. None of them got reach at all, but they played on more number one hits than Elvis, Beatles and Beach Boys combined! Understandably, they were bored with simple pop songs, so they decided to spice them up with original arrangements, guitar and drum licks that were characteristic for jazz, not for pop, strong rhythms. That's how they created the Motown sound! One of the central songs of the movie, the one they used to underline the originality of Motown was What Becomes of The Brokenhearted, and that was very emotional for me, knowing how much I love that song. Interestingly, original was done by Jimmy Ruffin, and that was his only hit! One thing that wasn't so good about the movie is that they tried to show how singers are not so important in the sound they created, so they invited the old Funk Brothers to play all those old song with new singers. Old singers did not ruin the sound, but in some cases the new ones were not adequate. But the instrumental sound was stunningly exciting just like the originals. It was really cool seeing Bootsy Collins and his weird outfits. Also Ben Harper handed some quality performances. But Me'Shell NdegeOcello and Joan Osborne pretty much spoiled the mood whenever they started improvising on their own.

new album==>
Ipanema: Je Suis Un Baseball Bat vs. Skull

In this update I decided to talk about one single, rather than cd-album. I already repeated many times before how much I like Mega City Four, and I played their stuff very often in my show. After the MC4 fell apart, the main man in the band wondered around looking for new activities. He was in a band called Serpico for awhile, toured a lot and did one ep with them. Now he's with a new band called Ipanema and they have this new single out. Very interesting stuff, melodic lines, strong guitar textures and friendly lyrics offer comfort to the listener. Similar to what we remember from the MC4 days, but with a bit sharper edge to it, but more consistent and warmer than what was offered on the Serpico ep. We are impatiently waiting for the long player to follow this exciting single.

<==rewind
Zoomers: Exist

I can imagine the impact of KLSU and it's free form programming in the 80's just looking at all the records that were played on this radio station at the time. Finally I stumbled upon something that I felt existed - a recorded material by an original eighties rock'n'roll band from Baton Rouge. Zoomers came from the same bayou as this radio show, our good old town. But these boys ain't swamp kids. This is a mind altering, exciting, fast post punk piece, rock'n'roll jewel by three local guys taking roads less taken and getting where no other band went before. But don't get me wrong, this is not some weird, that you might difficulties getting into. It's very much strongly imbedded in a good old rock'n'roll tradition. You can hear Modern Lovers, 60's nuggets, Bowie even psychedelia in these grooves, but what really happens is that these dudes without any pretensions achieved something what many other more serious bands just strive for. Legend says that they were stoned out of mind recording this album, but it looks like drugs hit some special creative spots in heads of these people so it all came out perfect. Certainly something that our local Baton Rouge bands could get a lesson from, if nothing else. After being printed out as a self release on a cassette in 1981, this is finally available on a cd through Hyped To Death Homework series.

Badger inspired some of the news in this update.

Dedicated to Stoja.