Here in the northeast, we’re in that peak/past peak moment with foliage. We balance precariously at this point for quite a few days before one day the weatherman pronounces decisively, “we’re past peak,” and you know it’s true. It’s also a time when we balance precariously between two radically different views of the future — […]
Summer of Black Lives Ending – September 21, 2016
There were more police killings of black men this week, including Keith Scott and Terence Crutcher, bringing a sense of frustration and grief that can’t go away because they don’t stop happening… This week’s Bubble Wrap show featured lots of funk, r&b, hip hop, and even some disco (imagine that), mostly addressing the black experience, […]
From the Archives: Interview with Bernie Worrell
In 2002, we emailed Bernie Worrell and asked if we could interview him. Somewhat to our surprise, he agreed, and we ended up talking with him for quite a while on the phone one spring day. Here’s that interview again. Bernie Worrell If you have listened to music sometime in the last 30 years, you’ve […]
Adventures in Radio – September 14, 2016
| Radio
Our discovery this week was The 1975. We’re sorry we didn’t bother to listen to them sooner. Despite occasionally sounding like a boy band, there’s an undercurrent of coolness to their ultra-pop. “Love Me,” the track we played, is killer dance pop. Hard not to like. Ditto for Angel Olsen whose My Woman album seems […]
The Pitfalls of an Unintegrated Set List – September 7, 2016
| Radio
On Bubble Wrap this week, we realized once again why sets of one person’s musical selections alternating with another person’s selections leads to chaos, both aurally and emotionally. Just when you’re ready to get out the bourbon, a comedy number comes on. Next we’re making you get your dancing shoes on, then we’re telling you […]
Twentieth Century Sound Survey – with Guest Host Bill LePage
| Radio
Composer, musician, and brother Bill LePage joined us on June 22 for a different sort of Bubble Wrap show, taking the concept of independent music far from the bounds to which the term is usually applied. Playing everything from Pogo to Ravel, Bill approached the sounds of the 20th century in a genre-agnostic way, mixing […]
Signature Sounds Showcase: Winterpills, And The Kids, The Suitcase Junket
| Radio
Considering that we practically live in their backyard, it’s surprising that we never noticed Signature Sounds Recordings until now. Signature Sounds is a label out of Northampton, Massachusetts, originally focused on folk, Americana, and singer-songwriter music, and more recently branching out into rock and indie. Folk is not usually my thing but recently I discovered […]
Jamila Woods – HEAVN
| Records
Poetry and hip hop are an obvious pair – the rapper and her rhymes — but while most rappers are poets in their own way, not as many poets are rappers. Jamila Woods has the skills to do both. She’s a recognized poet in the tradition of Lucille Clifton and Gwendolyn Brooks, and now has […]
Accidental Showcase: Bunyi Sembunyi, Orchid Tapes, Fixture Records, Jamila Woods and more
| Radio
Usually our Bubble Wrap shows are an assortment of tracks from near to far and then to now, but recently whole chunks of related music have been falling into our laps, and this week, we decided to showcase some of it. It gave us a chance to acquaint people and ourselves with indie labels and […]
For John Cage
| Music
John Cage, 20th century composer and innovator, is probably best known for his piece 4’33”, consisting of the sounds of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of “silence.” Audiences were confounded and not altogether pleased. Cage continued to pioneer an entire method of music composition based on “chance operations,” such as tossing coins or pulling slips […]
If I were from the Big Town, I would be calm and debonair: Summer Sounds
It’s August here in the small Vermont town where I live, and even here, in the so-called north country, we’re experiencing a bona fide heat wave. To celebrate, we watched Seven Year Itch while eating take-out sushi and drinking basil vodka. Yeah, it’s that kind of summer night. This week’s Bubble Wrap show was not […]
Old, New, Borrowed and Blue Songs
| Radio
With a wedding in our recent history, we went with a tried and winning formula for our August 3, 2016 show: old, new, borrowed, and blue. We pulled together tracks by Galaxie 500 and the Go Betweens (old), a pretty cover from Winterpills (borrowed), a bunch of stuff from 2013 through this year (new), and […]
Everything Is Moving So Fast: The Sad Show
| Radio
Life was meandering along in a happy midsummer kind of way when suddenly, out of nowhere (well, almost nowhere), we were hit with a double whammy of unhappy occurrences. First, our cat Birdie, nearly 20 years old and barely awake most of the time, wandered off one evening and didn’t come back. We were not […]
Games That We Can’t Win: More Songs of 2011
| Radio
2011 had a revolutionary heart and a crazy optimism that uplifted while still flying in the face of conventional logic. We all know how Occupy ended up – park cleared by riot police in the early morning hours one day in late November. Arab Spring did not produce much in the way of obvious positive […]
Your Empire Is Burning: Songs of 2011
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was pop music in 2011. In the larger world, there were eruptions of populist sentiment accompanied by chants and machine gun fire, depending on what part of the world you experienced “spring” in that year. Arab Spring rolled through the Middle East […]