…one of the great things about living in Austin is hearing absolutely random good music any time of day on the radio(unless you happen to be listening to John Ailey in which case the music is only good to fall asleep to).   I consider myself very lucky for having KUT, KVRX, and KOOP programming to listen to on the weekends. I tend to like the stuff they play late at night because…well that’s when I’m up. Anyway, Saturday night programs are my very favorite with Stronger than Dirt on KOOP followed by Rick McNulty’s Saturday night programming over on KUT. I’m on my third weekend in a row of calling one of them to catch a song title or ask about a release. A few weeks ago, I got turned on to the Scrotum Poles from Scott’s fill in on Stronger than Dirt and this week it was a wonderful new discovery of the band Antena from Rick.  I love that all the DJs are true music lovers and not only do they have name/title info, but they can make recommendations of similar artists and tell you interesting things about the bands.  Chatting with these guys makes my week although - I’m a pretty boring guy so that might be part of it.

To Climb a Cliff by Antena - I believe one of the guys from the Pet Shop Boys dubbed this “Electro Samba” or something like that. I have to say that it sounds especially contemporary now for a band that was making records in the 80s on the Factory Record label(the one with Joy Division & Happy Mondays). The lead singer eventually split from the band and made several records under the name Isabelle Antena which aren’t bad either.

Various songs by the Scrotum Poles - I heard Pick the Cat’s Eyes Out(the second song in this clip) on Stronger than Dirt and knew I had to learn more. They sound A LOT like the Television Personalities and seeing as how I have a soft spot for DIY punk, I am certainly glad to have been turned on to this. Actually, I had to call the station because they couldn’t say “scrotum” on the air so they said “S** Poles”. I went nuts trying to find a band called the Shit Poles(or maybe I misheard and it was the Shit Holes, etc) until the DJ straightened me out. He also recommended a collection called Messthetics(several volumes) on the Hyped 2 Death record label. The Messthetics comps are early/rare DIY punk/post punk stuff from the UK while they have a Homework comp series for US bands of the same genre, a Teenline compilation series for American powerpop, and a Hyped to Death comp series for US punk. After listening to some of their stuff on the web I have to concur this is a very very very good series for music off the beaten path. According to the DJ, you can’t find these in stores so you have to order online, but it appears as though the label prices their discs fairly and luckily it doesn’t suffer from the weak dollar like import series record labels do(talking about you Soul Jazz Records).