So the Sealyman Maestro dropped by and mentioned he was awaiting a CD (ask your father!) by Penny Arcade so I had to check them out. There is a fair bit on YouTube which I REALLY LIKED some from 2024 and more recently so this recent effort is for The Sealyman!
We mentioned Andy Fairweather-Low the other day with his Amen Corner big hit ‘ If Paradise (Was Half As Nice) and I said he had gone on to be a jobbing journeyman guitarist and back up singer for a huge range of folk and especially showing up in live tributes and fund raisers as in hear
Experience the haunting, atmospheric power of R.E.M. as they perform their classic hit "Drive" in a rare and intimate television appearance.This performance was recorded on March 13, 2008, at the KLRU-TV studios in Austin, Texas, for the legendary PBS series Austin City Limits. Taped during the week of the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, the concert served as a high-energy preview of their fourteenth studio album, Accelerate. While the set was packed with new, fast-paced rockers, this rendition of "Drive" provided a somber, mid-tempo highlight that showcased the band’s legendary dynamic range.🎸 The Story Behind the Song "Drive" was the lead single from R.E.M.’s landmark 1992 album, Automatic for the People, an record that defined the somber, acoustic-driven sound of the early 90s.The "Rock On" Homage: The song’s famous refrain, "Hey kids, rock and roll," was a direct tribute to David Essex's 1973 hit "Rock On.” (sic?) However, Michael Stipe transformed the phrase into something far more cynical and political, reflecting the "Bush-whacked" era of the early 1990s.A Song Without a Chorus: Musically, "Drive" is a rarity in pop history—a Top 40 hit that lacks a traditional chorus. It relies instead on a relentless, building tension and a stark, folk-inspired arrangement.The Transition: While the studio version is famous for its swelling John Paul Jones string arrangement, the live 2008 version emphasizes the interplay between Peter Buck’s electric guitar and the steady, driving rhythm that gives the song its title.✨ Musical Highlights Vocal Mastery: In this 2008 taping, Michael Stipe delivers a powerhouse vocal performance. By this stage of the band's career, Stipe had mastered the art of live improvisation, adding a seasoned grit to the lyrics while maintaining the song's eerie, hypnotic allure.Peter Buck’s Guitar Work: Watch for the mid-song solo where Peter Buck’s signature Rickenbacker jangle takes a backseat to a heavier, more distorted tone. This specific tour was characterized by a "return to rock," and even the band's older hits were infused with a new, aggressive energy.The Tightest Lineup: Along with core members Stipe, Buck, and Mike Mills, this performance features the exceptional backing of longtime auxiliary members Scott McCaughey and drummer Bill Rieflin, creating a wall of sound that perfectly fills the historic ACL stage.🏛️ About Austin City Limits 2008 R.E.M.’s appearance on Austin City Limits was a major event, marking the first time the band had ever performed on the longest-running music program in television history. The episode originally aired in May 2008 (Season 34, Episode 4) and was later released in its entirety as the live DVD Live from Austin, TX. This performance is widely regarded by fans as one of the band's best filmed sets from their final years, capturing them in a city that had championed their music since their early days on the college rock circuit.Subscribe for more legendary live performances and deep dives into the history of R.E.M. and the icons of alternative rock!
The Gants - I Wonder (1967)
Classic garage rock (sic?) from Greenwood, Miss. I thought I’d posted this but it turns out I’d posted the Outrageous Cherry’s fantastic cover.
well let’s see shall we?
[Outrageous Cherry was an American psychedelic pop / power pop and punk band from Detroit, Michigan, United States.Outrageous Cherry formed in 1991, and soon expanded to a four-piece after performing live in 1993. The group has released 13 albums, including 2014's The Digital Age. Larry Ray, the band's guitarist, died at the age of 63 from lung cancer on October 24, 2017.]
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We’re in Mexico (for a couple of days)! Here’s a celebratory playlist.
The playlist picture is of a masked figure in an incredible art library that the late Francisco Toledo founded here in Oaxaca. It is free to enter and you can pull most of the books off the shelves and browse…
I’m excited about our upcoming shows in CDMX, Guadalajara, and Monterey! Hasta pronto!
-David Byrne |
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Check out the remaining tour dates HERE (Last show: 9/19 @ Forest Hills Stadium) |
My album "Who Is The Sky?" is now available on all streaming platforms - LISTEN HERE |
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Gloria Steinem
3. 25. 1934. — 9. 2. 2026.
“Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.”
Hardly surprising when Alice ( O My Soul) posts a supreme songwriter . . .we often share taste including that of her own work . . .)
John Prine - “Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)”
Credit: Dangerous Minds / Madonna / SuperRare
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Another fascinating thesis from Butterboy on the darker side of pop! As Butterboy says ‘shadowed psychedelia' . . .the bulk of which I already seem to own! Especially the first album sine of the second and intriguingly (for me!) most of the third too
Enjoy! I did
PSYCH NOIR
VA - Psych Noir, A Journey Through Shadowed Psychedelia (A Butterboy Compilation) (4 x CDs)
Psychedelic music has always existed between light and darkness. While its most familiar image is one of colour, freedom and expanded consciousness, there has always been another side, a stranger, more mysterious world where experimentation turned inward and sound became a reflection of dreams, uncertainty and the human imagination.
Psych Noir, A Journey Through Shadowed Psychedelia explores that hidden landscape.
This collection is not simply a gathering of obscure psychedelic recordings. It is a journey through an alternative history of music — one where atmosphere, emotion and imagination are as important as melody and rhythm. These are recordings that explore the spaces between reality and illusion: haunting guitar textures, hypnotic rhythms, surreal arrangements and performances that create entire worlds within a few minutes of recorded sound.
The artists represented here followed a different path. Some emerged from the psychedelic explosion of the late 1960s; others appeared in underground scenes where experimentation existed away from mainstream attention. Many created music that was too unusual for commercial success but too compelling to be forgotten. Their recordings became time capsules — discoveries waiting for future generations of listeners and collectors.
Psych Noir celebrates those hidden corners of musical history.
It traces the evolution of psychedelic music beyond its colourful reputation and reveals a deeper, more cinematic tradition. This is psychedelia as mystery rather than celebration; as exploration rather than escape. These recordings often feel like musical films without images — soundtracks to imagined journeys, forgotten memories and places that exist somewhere between dreams and reality.
The importance of these recordings lies not only in their rarity, but in their creativity. They demonstrate the freedom that existed when musicians treated the studio as a laboratory and sound itself as a form of storytelling. Echo, distortion, unusual instrumentation and experimental arrangements became tools for expressing emotions that conventional songwriting could not capture.
For collectors, this is part of the enduring fascination. Each discovery represents a piece of a larger puzzle, a forgotten artist, an independent release, a lost moment of inspiration preserved against time.
Psych Noir, A Journey Through Shadowed Psychedelia is therefore more than a compilation. It is an exploration of the hidden currents that have flowed beneath popular music for more than half a century. It honours the artists who embraced uncertainty, challenged expectations and transformed darkness into something beautiful. It is music that rewards patience and close listening. Across these eighty recordings, the listener travels through the hidden corners of perception, where shadow and imagination meet. (Butterboy)
"The shadows were never empty, They were always full of sound.”
Track listing
CD1
01 Doors - The End 11:41 2026
02 Velvet Underground - Venus in Furs 5:08 1997
03 Nico - These Days 3:29 1965
04 Pink Floyd - Set The Controls for The Heart of The Sun 5:27 1968
05 Love - The Red Telephone 4:44 2026
06 Scott Walker - The Seventh Seal 4:58 2003
07 United States of America - The American Metaphysical Circus 4:57 1968
08 Zombies - Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914) 2:45 1968
09 Van Der Graaf Generator - After The Flood 10:59 2000
10 Can - Mary, Mary So Contrary 6:16 1969
11 Comus - Diana 4:36 1971
12 Coven - Black Sabbath 3:28 1969
13 Silver Apples - Oscillations 2:47 2021
14 Doors - End of the Night 2:54 1967
15 Velvet Underground - Heroin 7:13 2012
16 Deviants - The People Suite 2:24 1969
17 Secondhand - Reality 8:43 2019
18 Nico - Winter Song 3:20 1967
19 B-key - Black Magic 6:18 2021
20 Third Ear Band - Druid One 3:47 2019
CD2
01 Neu! - Hallogallo 10:06 1972
02 Amon Duul Ii - Archangels Thunderbird 3:30 1970
03 Faust - It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl 7:26 2010
04 Popol Vuh - Aguirre I (L'acrime di rei) 7:22 2010
05 Cluster - Hollywood 4:46 2026
06 Tangerine Dream - Phaedra 16:47 1973
07 Ash Ra Tempel - Amboss 19:56 1971
08 Hawkwind - Master of the Universe 6:16 1971
09 Suicide - Ghost Rider 2:32 2023
10 Goblin - Suspiria 5:57 2020
11 Swans - Stay Here 5:37 1990
12 Throbbing Gristle - Hamburger Lady 4:08 2006
13 This Heat - 24 Track Loop 5:56 1979
14 La Dusseldorf - Silver Cloud 8:02 1975
15 Can - Oh Yeah 7:22 2021
16 Heldon - In the Wake of King Fripp 6:36 1975
17 Franco Battiato - Pollution 8:49 1973
18 Peter Hammill - Red Shift 8:11 1974
19 Robert Fripp - Exposure 4:25 2024
20 Chrome - TV as Eyes 2:19 1979
CD3
01 Portishead - Roads 5:09 1994
02 Massive Attack - Angel 6:17 2008
03 Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Prowler 5:05 2016
04 Godspeed You! Black Emperor - East Hastings (Short Verison) 4:46 2023
05 Tortoise - Glass Museum 5:28 2001
06 UNKLE - Lonely Soul 8:56 1998
07 Boards of Canada - In A Beautiful Place Out in The Country 2:44 2015
08 Amon Tobin - Slowly 5:37 2000
09 Portishead - Strangers 3:58 1994
10 Notwist - Pick Up the Phone 3:55 2002
11 Low - Words 5:50 1994
12 Mazzy Star - Into Dust 5:38 1993
13 Cinematic Orchestra feat. Roots Manuva - All Things to All Men 10:59 2007
14 Cocteau Twins - Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires 5:36 1990
15 DJ Shadow - Building Steam With a Grain of Salt 6:41 1996
16 Sigur Rós - Samskeyti 5:23 2007
17 Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely 5:56 2000
18 Tricky - Overcome 4:30 1995
19 Burial - Archangel 3:58 2007
20 Massive Attack - Teardrop 5:21 1998
CD4
01 Tim Hecker - Virginal I 6:16 2011
02 Oneohtrix Point Never - Still Life 4:53 2013
03 Haxan Cloak - Excavation (Part 1) 8:09 2018
04 Lustmord - Black Star 15:00 2000
05 Anna Von Hausswolff - The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra 6:08 2017
06 Caretaker - Libet's delay 3:26 2011
07 Forest Swords - Thor's Stone 4:31 2026
08 Ryuichi Sakamoto - async 2:44 2017
09 Nils Frahm - Says 8:18 2013
10 William Basinski - dlp 1.1 1:03:35 2002
11 Lingua Ignota - Do You Doubt Me Traitor 9:34 2019
12 Puce Mary - Red Desert 3:23 2018
13 Prurient - Dragonflies to Sew You Up 5:19 2015
14 Alva Noto - Uni sub 5:50 2018
15 Ben Frost - A Sharp Blow in Passing 5:13 2017
16 Clark - Herr Bar 3:54 2006
17 Raime - Coax 4:12 2016
18 Emptyset - Fragment 3:16 2013
19 Julianna Barwick ft. Jónsi - In Light 6:06 2020
20 Stars of the Lid - The Lonely People (Are Getting Lonelier) 10:05 2001
