Classic Album of the Week

Only Classic Albums from the most recent three months are included on this page.

Older Classic Albums can be found on the original playlist pages, listed in alphabetical order here.

Click on LP covers for more info and reviews.

   

Led Zeppelin's untitled 4th album  AKA "Led Zeppelin IV" 1971 (UK)
The Kosmik Radiation show has come to a close with the airing of this episode. Our final classic album is simply one of the most popular classic rock albums of all time, and contains the greatest classic rock song of the 1970's. There isn't much I can say about Zeppelin IV that hasn't been said many times before. I figured it would make a classy finale!
The Kosmik Radiation show debuted on the FM airwaves in April 2005, and WORT-FM and this website began hosting recent programs online for your listening enjoyment around the summer of 2006. The show was originally on from 2:00 to 5:00 every Wednesday morning (i.e., late nite Tuesday) until early 2009 when the show moved to the same timeslot on Friday mornings (i.e., Thursday late night.) At the end of summer 2014, Kosmik Radiation moved to 11:00 to 2:00 on Tuesday nights (not quite so late night!), where it remained until April 2018. At that time, host Dave 3000 moved from Madison to Chicago, and from then on the program was pre-recorded and submitted for airplay rather than "performed" live on the air from WORT's studio in the middle of the night. At this time, Kosmik Radiation also returned to the same timeslot the show originated with in 2005! Although the format evolved over the years, Kosmik Radiation always focused on "psychedelic, progressive, heavy and underground sounds from all around": groovy music (and sometimes other audio weirdness) from all over the world, since the years when music got "groovy" in the middle of the previous century (roughly around BeBop and Varese). Although the show certainly played a ton of records from the 1960's and 70's, nearly a third of the tracks played on Kosmik Radiation were new records released in the preceding 12 months - overwhelmingly on small indie labels or self-released music.
Originally the first show of every month was going to be a deep dive into a legendary (or obscure) artist of yesteryear, however the Digital Millenium Copyright Act rules for webcasting made that impossible once WORT programs went online. So instead there were monthly specials focusing on specific years, genres, musical instruments (including a sitar show and a cowbell show; I actually had a cowbell mic-ed up in the studio and played along to many of the songs to add EVEN MORE COWBELL!) There was a three-part series on psychedelic music in Japan I did back in 2007 (part one - two - three), and in the late 2010's that sort of came full circle when I started playing a lot of contemporary J-pop on the show. Sometimes I played records on top of each other, backwards, at the wrong speed, and created live "collage" mixes on the air. One time I brought a guitar to the studio and mic'ed it up so I could jam along to the Dead live on the air. Probably the most elaborate show was the 2008 Neil Young birthday episode: a six-hour program with a band performing nearly two hours of Neil songs live from WORT's studio! There was also an incredibly strange Beatles special that year with a different bunch of musicians live in the studio. I did some pretty creative thematic shows, like making up "imaginary albums" from legendary groups that broke up, hosting a goofy novelty music show "in character" (all of my air breaks were completely scripted for that one), and an electronic music special where all the air breaks were performed by synthsized "robot" voices.
Basically, I got to try out just about every wacky idea I had for interesting things to do on the radio! Whatever part of this 6,888 day (nearly 19 year) journey into weird late night radio that you were a part of, THANKS FOR LISTENING!

  -- "stay groovy!" - your now-former host, Dave 3000
  
David Bowie "Heroes"  1977 (UK)
The Kosmik Radiation show is coming to a close, and we're going out with the best of the best. Next week we'll do legendary groups of the groovy era (the 1970's and earlier), and this week we're focusing on individuals or "solo artists", if you will. And I can't think of a more singular individual in the modern music world than the iconic and enigmatic Mr. David Bowie. All of his albums are "at least interesting" (even the twee 1967 debut and the slick 1980's pop), and no two Bowie albums are alike. He's been accused of many things, but sounding like anybody other than himself is not one of them. His early 1970's take on glam rock is rightly heralded as among the most creative rock of it's day, and heck he even got Lou Reed into the American Top 10! (Iggy didn't quite get that far, but Bowie kept his career aftloat until the punk era came along as well.) Bowie's commercial peak could have been the 1980's, and he did very original albums during the 1990's (Earthling) and into the 21st century (The Next Day, blackstar). But in between the glam and the pop, he spent the end of the 1970's in Berlin making futuristic records with Brian Eno that prefigured (i.e. heavily influenced) the way popular music sounded in the 1980's. "Heroes" was the second of his so-called "Berlin trilogy" of albums, and was a pretty popular record considering how uncommercial and weird it is! (Like, a "disco" record with Fripp & Eno -- and side two is mostly instrumental!) In fact, this album was a big influence on Scott Walker when he decided to "get weird." A nice irony, since Walker was clearly one of Bowie's biggest influences as a singer back in the 1960's when he was getting started.
Jeff Parker "The New Breed"  2016 (USA)
Jazz is still alive! Jeff Parker is a guitar player whose most famous gig was playing in the popular "post-rock" band Tortoise in the 90's-00's, and around then he also had another underground jazz-rock thing going called Isotope 217° along with trumpeter Rob Mazurek. By the 2010's, he had carved his own musical path. The New Breed is a modern jazz masterpiece. His current group (also called The New Breed) has a sound that strongly echoes 1970's jazz fusion and groovy progressive soul (the sound of Jeff's childhood, and "his Dad's music" - the album cover is an old polaroid of his dad.) So there is a clear nostalgia factor, but also the music is composed and performed in a chopped-up, nearly cubist style, that recalls modern hip-hop techniques. Though it is definitely not anything like a rap album either. Since Mr. Parker was in a "post-rock" band, maybe this very original music should be called "post-jazz"?
Dr. Patrick Gleeson "Patrick Gleeson's Star Wars"  1977 (USA)
There were three huge "cultural event" blockbuster films I recall from the end of the 1970s: Smokey & The Bandit (#2 at the box office in 1977), Saturday Night Fever (1978), and Star Wars (#1 at the box office in 1977; the film later rebranded as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope). Even it you hadn't seen these films, references to them were everywhere. Smokey was a sexy "red state" comedy with a Country Music soundtrack (sooo dumb but kind of fun) and of course everyone knows about the legendary Bee Gees disco hits from Fever (which is a 5-star classic film about blue collar urban youth, in case you haven't seen it). The third of those films needs no introduction, and anyway I want to focus on what the deal was in 1977 when the first film in that ever-expanding fungus-franchise came out. Internet-driven "fandoms" did not exist yet (there were a few Trekkies around, but everyone thought they were the biggest dorks in the world.) Franchising, merchandising, sequelizing, monetizing, and all that corporate jazz was not really a thing yet, but it was about to be in large part due to the explosion of Star Wars mania. Every conceivable thing about Star Wars appeared on store shelves and in TV commercials: I recall eating "C-3PO's" breakfast cereal and washing my hair with Darth Vader shampoo when I was a kid! So naturally, there would be "Star Wars music albums" to be sold. I think there must have been changes in how studios deal with music liscensing, because there were a ton of "not music from the actual movie" Star Wars "inspired" albums based on John Williams' classic score for the film (including the inevitable disco version). I own two "electronic" Star Wars albums - the one by Electric Moog Orchestra Music From Star Wars (also 1977) is very mid, but Dr. Patrick Gleeson's take on it is so original that he put his own name before the movie in the title of his album (and maybe also had to do that for legal reasons? None of the album artwork refers to intellectual properties of 20th Century Fox pictures in any way of course! That's why there's a giant skull shooting pinballs at moons on the front cover!) Gleeson's previous works include an electronic version of Holst's famous classical suite The Planets (which is not as good as Tomita's version of the same piece that came out the same year). But more importantly he was a founder of Different Fur Studios in San Francisco where he worked as the "synthesizer technician" on some of the grooviest Herbie Hancock albums of the 1970's and eventually joined Herb's touring band. In subsequent years, he co-produced a couple tracks on Devo's debut album (1978; Brian Eno and Conny Plank also worked on that one!) and the very cool My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (1981) was recorded at his studio!
Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra "Lightning Dreamers"  2023 (USA)
This was a pretty weird year for music, by which I mean there wasn't a lot of notable "psychedelic and progressive rock" which is the main vein of this show. So this year, we have a bunch of pop, electronic, and even country music in my Top 25 of 2023, and our top album of 2023 is a "psychedelic jazz" album. Rob Mazurek is a trumpeter, and some of the key members of the ESO include trippy vocalist Damon Locks and brilliant guitarist Jeff Parker (who will get his own classic album in the coming weeks!) This week's classic album is the eighth release by ESO, though Mazurek has been releasing albums for nearly 30 years; his previous projects include the band Isotope 217° (also with Jeff Parker) and he was a founding member of the Chicago Underground Collective (who released nearly 20 albums in the 1990's, and most recently put out a record in 2020). He also spent several years living in Brazil, adding another dimension to his musical influences. This album was released on the Chicago label International Anthem which has been releasing some of the best jazz of recent years, including the #4 album on my best of the year list, the posthumous final album from another trumpeter, Jaimie Branch.
Parquet Courts "Wide Awake!"  2018 (USA)
This week is the 800th episode of this show, so we're looking back on some of the great artists of the Kosmik Radiation Era (2005-2024) and inducting some modern classics into the hall of fame. Parquet Courts are an indie rock band from Noo Yawk Citay formed around 2010. They remind me of a few classic punk/new wave bands from that area, particularly Talking Heads, and of course every white group from NYC has been influenced by Lou Reed. The early records were lo-fi and quirky, on the last couple albums their production values and sonic palette have expanded notably. Wide Awake! is my favorite by Parkay Quartz so far, and it was in the running for my best album of 2018.
Charles Bradley "Victim Of Love"  2013 (USA)
Charles Bradley released his first record (a 7" single) in 2002 when he was 54 years old. Prior to that, his main claim to fame was performing in bars and small clubs doing James Brown impersonations under the name "Black Velvet." He didn't really begin his ascent until he started working with Menahan Street Band in 2007, and his debut album came out in 2011 when he was 63 years old! I saw him three times in Madison during the 2010's, and those shows progressed from half-full to overflow crowds; later he headlined a local festival with thousands of attendees which I did not see. His concerts were old-school SOUL exravaganzas with a hot band and Charles even did the splits on stage! It was almost impossible not to fall in love with the guy upon encountering him: in fact, he would literally say "I LOVE YOU" to the crowd about a hundred times at every show (even more than Ozzy says it!) One time I even saw him hanging out by the door after his gig to personally thank the audience as they were leaving and he gave hugs to anyone who wanted one! It was very clear how grateful he was to finally be living his dream as a SOUL SINGER. Artistically, he was a bridge to the greats of the past. His main influences were James Brown (on the uptempo numbers) and Otis Redding (on the ballads). Sadly, he died of cancer in 2017 and only left us four albums, including one that was posthumously released. Victim Of Love was his second album and is my favorite of the bunch. I should also mention that in addition to his great original songs, he also did some incredible covers: "Changes" by Black Sabbath was the titular track of his third album (and easily surpasses any previous version of that song), and his soulful funky versions of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" (an early B-side included on his final album) and The Grateful Dead's "Cumberland Blues" (from a tribute album) are also amazing!
The Black Angels "Directions To See A Ghost"  2008 (USA)
For our third classic album this week, here's one that is just straight-up old fashioned GROOVY PSYCHEDELIC ROCK. The Black Angels were the hot neo-psych band of the late 00's and early 10's, though they have been less prolific in recent years and somewhat supplanted by the Aussie psych rock boom. I think they are also still involved with the Austin Psych Fest which they began and has been going on for about 15 years now. Angels are a Texican band in the grand tradition of 13th Floor Elevators and have performed gigs as Roky Erikson's backup band. If you like tribal rock beats, heavy drones, gobs of reverb, and strobe lights, this is yer band maaan! I think their best album could be their second one Directions To See A Ghost.
     
Click here for classic albums from more than three months ago.
          

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