iF: Episode 087: Downtown

Dig the latest HMK Mystery Stream, Episode: 087 Downtown.

Make It Louder,

Migwell

Band Logos That Rock!

The ever witty insaniacs over at Abduzeedo have a come up with a pretty cool Top 25 Best Band Logo list.

Nice job guys, but there are a few blaring omissions like Zeppelin, The New York Dolls and dude, you can't leave out Legs Diamond!

Kiss made it all the way to number 4 and The Beatles clocked in at 17.



I must say though, I totally agree with the top choice.

What do you think? Check it out: Abduzeedo

That's Right,

HMK

For Sale: 3 Million Records and 300,000 CDs

Wow! The World's Largest Record Collection is for Sale on eBay.

A physical music collection purported to be the largest in the world is on sale on eBay, with a minimum reserve bid of $3 million.

The collection includes more than 6 million songs on 3 million records and 300,000 compact discs. If you were to buy the whole thing on iTunes by the song -- not that you'd be able to find all of them -- the collection would run you $5,940,000 (in that sense, $3 million is a bargain).

Read it all from Eliot Van Buskirk and the smart folks over at the Wired Blog or listen thanks to NPR.

Make It Louder,

Migwell

Three Hearts

Tune in to the latest HMK Mystery Stream here: Episode 044: Three Hearts.

And check this out: Happy Valentine's Day!

That's Right,

HMK

Hammond Eggs #33

Here's the cover art I put together for this past Saturday's Hammond Eggs Show on 90.1 KSYM down here in beautiful San Antonio, Texas.


My Set List: Hammond Eggs 033, 7am-9am February 2, 2008.



So hey, if you're up bright and early between 7am and 9am on Saturdays, why not grab some fresh coffee and tune in to KSYM 90.1 and join me and my buddy Brian Parish on his Saturday morning Hammond Eggs Show.

And just in case you missed it - here's this past weekend's show: The Hammond Eggs Show: 033.

Make It Louder,

Migwell

iF: Irregular Frequency Episode: 094 Tweed

Dig the latest HMK Mystery Stream, Episode: 094 Tweed.

Make It Louder,

Migwell

Jazz Timeline

Check out this sweet Timeline of Jazz courtesey of the smart folks over at Jazz In America.

Starting in the 1600's and running though the present, the time line parallels developments in jazz and it's relation to popular culture.

Make It Louder,

Migwell

iF: Episode 069: Canceled Flight

Canceled Flight: 069.

And remember - Call 206-203-4941 to leave your own audio segue for inclusion consideration in a future HMK Mystery Stream.

That's: 206-203-4941 - We're Listening...

Happy New Year!

Make It Louder and Stay Tuned Y'all!

Migwell

Puttin' The Phone In Headphones

Sweet! Turn an old telephone handset into dj headphones.

Remember seeing disc jockeys using them at Discos back in the 80's? Well, here's a bitchin' How To Guide for turning an old telephone handset into dj headphones.

All you need is an old telephone handset, a soldering iron, a mono male phone plug and a sharp utility blade and you're DUN.

Make It Louder,

Migwell

The Nightfly at 25

One of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces has turned 25.

Often, an album rises from regular best-seller to classic status because it captures the temper of its times. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," for instance, simply sounds like 1967, trippy and disarrayed. But "The Nightfly," the 1982 album from songwriter Donald Fagen, gives that standard a twist. Instead of evoking the early '80s, Mr. Fagen captures a different time -- the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, when America was starting to simmer but the '60s hadn't arrived in earnest. Along the way, he pulls off an unmatched bit of alchemy, blending satire and affection without letting one overwhelm the other.

If the album doesn't ring a bell, don't worry. "The Nightfly" has sold more than a million copies and shown enough staying power to get a soup-to-nuts anniversary edition in November from Reprise Records. Yet it never quite made itself inescapable. If you've heard one of the songs, it was probably either "I.G.Y.," a catalog of World's Fair forecasts about the future, or "New Frontier," a frantic, jazzy number about a "summer smoker underground" in a fallout shelter.

You might also know Mr. Fagen, who has a long history of misdirection. As the front man for the band Steely Dan, he co-wrote a decade's worth of hits that hid snarky lyrics under silky harmonies and slick musicianship. "The Nightfly," which arrived a couple of years after the band broke up, was something else altogether. For once, Mr. Fagen stopped being cryptic and opened up to his audience.

As he wrote in the liner notes, the songs "represent certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city during the late fifties and early sixties, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build." The cover adds another layer of autobiography. On the front, we see Mr. Fagen as a crew-cut deejay on the graveyard shift. On the back is his audience, a single lighted window in a row of tract homes -- or maybe the artist as a young man, drinking in inspiration.

If so, he didn't forget a thing. Throughout the record, Mr. Fagen draws on obscure corners of American pop for his musical settings -- stuff that got pushed to one side by the British Invasion and then trampled underfoot by the harder sounds of the late '60s. But he's not simply aiming at pastiche. The music always reinforces his themes of innocence and experience.


In "New Frontier," for instance, he uses cocktail-party jazz to set the story of a would-be ladies' man on the make. The music sounds as frenetic as the teenage hero's hormones, and its deliberately cheesy tone matches the kid's skin-deep sophistication. Likewise, "The Goodbye Look" uses a campy tropical backdrop -- the kind a teenager would hear on his parents' cha-cha records -- for a tale of romance and revolution on an island paradise. Mr. Fagen throws in some vocal homages, as well. "Maxine," a story of hand-wringing college romance, gets decked out with soaring harmonies worthy of the Four Freshmen.

The lyrics are just as poignant and precise. Take the opening number, "I.G.Y.," which pokes fun at space-age daydreams. "By '76, we'll be A-OK," the narrator promises, enjoying undersea trains, wheels in space and "Spandex jackets, one for everyone." But Mr. Fagen's vocals never make it seem like he's sneering. He seems to be joking about his own dashed hopes as much as everyone else's, and he clearly has a lot of affection for those forgotten tomorrows.

"New Frontier," meanwhile, turns JFK's famous phrase into a metaphor for the mysteries of sex and adulthood. The song follows a wannabe hipster through a party in his parents' bomb shelter, as he chases a girl "with a touch of Tuesday Weld" and imagines a future that would get big laughs in "The Graduate." "I can't wait till I move to the city," he confides, "till I finally make up my mind to learn design and study overseas." Obviously, Mr. Fagen is having some fun at his hero's expense. But he also seems to have fond memories of just how sexy a vacuum-packed world could be.

The album's most revealing line comes in the title song, narrated by the disc jockey on the cover. "You'd never believe it," he tells his listeners in a weak moment, "but once there was a time when love was in my life."

I sometimes wonder what happened to that flame

The answer's still the same

It was you, it was you

Tonight you're still on my mind


A girl, surely -- but maybe also the America that got swept away by riots, sit-ins and Southeast Asia.

Reprise's reissue moves the story along by bundling in Mr. Fagen's two other solo records -- as well as a bunch of extras -- to make a "three ages of man" trilogy. "Kamakiriad," from 1993, is a witty meditation on middle age and its regrets, told as a sci-fi travelogue through a future America. "Morph the Cat," released in 2006, is the weak leg here: a first-draft effort from a musician who makes a living on precision. As for the extras, you get a lot of hard-to-find songs and multimedia doodads, but the real gems are Mr. Fagen's sly liner notes. In particular, one closing observation: "I'm glad I made 'The Nightfly' before a lot of the kid-ness was beat the hell out of me, as happens to us all." It's a perfect coda for the record -- and a melancholy confirmation of its themes.

By Robert Toth, an editor for The Journal Report.

Episode 093: Ultimate Aim

Ultimate Aim Episode: 093.

Please Call 206-203-4941 if you want to leave your own audio segue to be considered for inclusion on a future HMK Mystery Stream.

That's: 206-203-4941 - We're Listening...

Happy New Year!

Make It Louder and Stay Tuned Y'all!

Migwell

New Clear Days!

Here's to New Clear Days! And here's a little sneak preview to some of what we've got on deck for the HMK Mystery Stream in 2008.

Remember the Vapors? Turning Japanese! I Think I'm turning Japanese! Well, here's one off of the same album, New Clear Days, the brilliant opening track, a perfect little pop ditty from my senior year at Madison High School way back in 1980. Spring Collection.



And trust me on this one, you will absolutely totally love this incredible jazz number. Dig the 8 minute and 47 seconds worth of pure audio bliss: Stolen Moments from Mr. Oliver Nelson's 1961 The Blues And The Abstract Truth album. Goes perfect with a coffee and/or a cocktail. The wife and I will start the first day of our New Year 2008 with Stolen Moments as part of our soundtrack...

Enjoy!

Have yourself a Happy New Year!

All the Best,

Cheers & Stay warm!

Migwell