We've been sitting on this show for awhile, and it was great to finally get it out over the airwaves. The 1990s garage punk scene was incredibly rich and diverse, but also seems to have gotten largely obscured over the past decade. Since its emergence in the mid-1960s, garage rock has undergone numerous revivals - every decade has at least one or two distinct garage rock movements within the underground rock scene. When most people today refer to contemporary "garage rock," they tend to think of the early 2000s garage rock segment of the post-punk revival that brought groups like The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Hives, and The Vines widespread popularity and commercial success. Bands such as The Black Keys, The Libertines, Jet, Black Lips, Jay Reatard, and Ty Segall followed, many of them earning mainstream acclaim too. But none of these groups would exist without the solid foundation built during the late 1980s and 1990s by The Gories, Thee Headcoats, Rock From the Crypt, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, et al, along with entrenched underground record labels like In the Red, Estrus, Crypt, Sympathy For the Record Industry, Goner, and Damaged Goods. Anyhow, this is our brief (and by no means complete) survey of an exciting and fertile period of our recent rock'n'roll past.

Here's the playlist for our Thursday, May 8, 2014, broadcast:

Rocket From the Crypt - "Jumper K Balls"
The Gories - "I Think I've Had It"
Bassholes - "Knocked Out On My Lawn"
Oblivians - "Trouble"
New Bomb Turks - "Born Toulouse-Lautrec"
The Rip Offs - "She Said Yeah"
The Makers - "Little Piece of Action"
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - "40 lb Block of Cheese"
Railroad Jerk - "Bang the Drum"
Cheater Slicks - "Lost Inside"
The Chrome Cranks - "Lo-End Buzz"
Doo Rag - "Hussy Bowler"
The PeeChees - "Tired Imagery"
The Delta 72 - "On the Rocks"
Make Up - "White Belts"
Guitar Wolf - "Invader Ace"
The Drags - "I Like to Die"
Thee Headcoats - "(We Hate the Fuckin') NME"
The Lord High Fixers - "You're On My Mind"
Teengenerate - "Dressed in Black"
The Mooney Suzuki - "Everything's Gone Wrong"

Archived streaming audio of this show can be heard here now (playable in Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Opera, and Safari browsers):

Back in late April, our friends in The Faint came through Madison for their first concert in the city in nearly a decade (long before The Way Out DJs Diana and Andrew landed here). Andrew first interviewed The Faint for Skyscraper in 2000 - shortly after the release of the Blank-Wave Arcade album - and the Omaha new wave punks were a fairly regular fixture in the magazine until it went on hiatus around 2010. The Faint just delivered their first new album in six years, Doom Abuse, and it was great to take in their live show again, which has only grown more elaborate and enthralling over the years.

The Faint's return got us to thinking about the so-called "dance punk" scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Though bands like The Faint stood out for combining aspects of new wave and synth-pop into the indie/post-punk/post-hardcore sounds of 1990s underground rock, the dance punk genre was quite diverse, encompassing a wide range of artists who also experimented with elements of funk, disco, dancehall, soul and R&B, hip-hop, and 1950s-80s rock'n'roll and dance-pop. The playlist here is only a loosely thrown together cross-section of some of our favorite artists from the genre, anchored by a mix of new and old music from The Faint.

Here's the playlist for our Thursday, April 24, 2014, broadcast:

The Chinese Stars - "Cheap City Halo"
The Faint - "Worked Up So Sexual"
Liars - "Mr. Your On Fire Mr."
Radio 4 - "Dance to the Underground"
LCD Soundsystem - "Give It Up"
The Rapture - "Heaven"
Q and Not U - "Collect the Diamonds"
Les Savy Fav - "I.C. Timer"
Girls Against Boys - "Exorcisto"
Digital Leather - "Decoys"
The Faint - "Evil Voices"
Watchers - "My Cube"
The Eternals - "War's Blazing Disciples"
!!! - "All My Heroes Are Weirdos"
Gogogo Airheart - "So Good"
The Faint - "Your Retro Career Melted"

Archived streaming audio of this show can be heard here now (playable in Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Opera, and Safari browsers):



P.S. - The in-studio Faint performance that we plugged in the broadcast never happened. Too bad.

Being the 1980s-90s indie rock nerds that we are, the April 15th deluxe vinyl box set reissue of Slint's 1991 post-rock masterpiece Spiderland was a big honking deal around The Way Out household. A big, big deal. It was a no-brainer that we were going to do a Slint themed broadcast this week. We set out to explore the Slint Family Tree, though only partially succeeded due to the 1-hour time limit. There was a lot of music we didn't get a chance to play: Evergreen, Dead Child, Shipping News, Royal Trux, The Breeders, Gastr del Sol, Sally Timms, Matmos, and the brand-new Watter. We should probably return and do a Part 2 sometime in the coming months...

Here's the playlist for our Thursday, April 17, 2014, broadcast:

Squirrel Bait - "Kid Dynamite"
Slint - "Charlotte"
Big Black - "Kerosene"
Bastro - "Shoot Me a Deer"
Bitch Magnet - "Valmead"
King Kong - "Movie Star"
Slint - "Breadcrumb Trail"
Tortoise - "The Taut and Tame"
Papa M - "Beloved Woman"
The For Carnation - "Get and Stay Get March"
Palace Brothers - "Riding"
Slint - "Pam (4 Track Vocal Demo)"

Archived streaming audio of this show can be heard here now (playable in Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Opera, and Safari browsers):