Where's The Beat? Live In The Wfmu Studios

25 tracks on a double CD that spans only part of the massive, recent live in the studio (duh!) archive of New Jersey’s and the World’s best free-form radio stations. Being ‘FMU this runs all over the place from Finnish folk to kiddie rock to noise to pop to garage to ??? Dig in – you’re bound to hear something that’ll knock yer socks off.

(((((1))))) Excellent Finnish folk with odd tunings/tonalities, female vocals and bird whistles (!?)
(((((2))))) Wow! Super-upppity, rhythmic number by the Ex. Great drumming & guitar tone.
((((3)))) Slow indie folk with more of that jut-jut patter that the Ex did.
((4)) Generic “heavy“ bar rock. Yuk! This band used to rip it up with the monster psych but now they’re just like a lame jam band.
(((5))) Kiddie garage rock. Goofy, sloppy but kinda fun. At least they’re not playing classic rock covers.
((((6)))) Bassy, swampy indie rock. Starts off like friggin’ Mudhoney (yep that’s a good thing).
((((7)))) Twangy, psych with female vocals in Khmer and some snazzy horns.
((((((8))))) Glockenspiel! Plus, some great, funky, jazzy horn sounds all over the place. College marching bands could only dream being this good. (Looking at you Stanford).
((((9)))) Good, clicky, bassy, repetitive minimal Mexican techno.
((10)) Chaotic, feedback & noise pounding. Pretty lame stuff ‘ala Burmese, etc.
(((11)))) Pretty cool jazzy rock jam with the sax player from the Stooges
(((12)))) Decent garagey punk/rock then gets annoying when they start slowing down.

DISC 2
((1)) Medicore “post-rock” guitar noodling with slow dreary vocals.
(((2))) Totally silly, not quite prog but theatrical 70’s histronic hard rock. Whole thing makes you go “Whuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut?”
(((3))) Nice spoken word. Strummy guitars and minimal drums backing it up. Local, too.
(((((4))))) Airy, “chamber jazz”? Lots of violin and Fender Rhodes.
(((((((5)))))) Yow! Funky, horns and bass. Has a very “shoulda been in a kooky 60’s movie” feeling.
(((6))) Swingin’ goof-rock with Jad & David Fair + lots of horns. Might sound better after a few drinks.
(((((7))))) Awesome “downer rawk” which pushes itself further with the always phenomenonal vocals of Mark Arm.
(((8))) Nerdy Brit rock with just guitar & vocals. Cool lyrics but the song’s kinda of “meh”.
((((9)))) Mostly good and catchy pop, 60’s influenced swaggery rock.
((((10)))) Surfy, reverby punk-ish psych. Somehow they put it all together and it works. Fun stuff!
((((((11)))))) Trashy British punk/garage. Hard to beat a band with names like Clive Shite and Dick Slum.
(((12))) Kenyan-American band doing, uh…”Afro-pop-rock”. Lyrics are in some kind of Keyan language (Swahili?). Guitars have “East African” tone ‘ala Talking Heads “Nothing But Flowers”. Pretty good but goes on too long.
((((13)))) Pretty nice, gentle folk ‘ala Mariee Sioux. (Fairly similar voice, too).