On Sunday January 4th, I welcomed the New Year with a Sunday Special on WREK. Keith Lee, a local musician, contacts me occasionally with ideas for shows, and I basically help make it happen. People more pompous than me claim "producer" credit for the role. Keith and his wife Lynn always do a great job of putting together a tight show.
So this past show was to showcase the year of 1969, forty years later. Many landmark records were released that year, and there were many significant changes in American politics and culture. We had music as well as sound bites, exploring 1969 through the music of John Lennon, King Crimson, Sly and the Family Stone, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, Isaac Hayes, Can, The Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones, Merle Haggard, Serge Gainsbourg, Frank Zappa and many many more.
Direct link to STREAM of archived show:
http://www.wrek.org/stream/meta/week/wrek_live-128kb/Sunday_SpecialO.m3u
Direct links for DOWNLOADING the show (e.g. to your iPod / mp3 player, or to burn to CD), 27 MB each:
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun1900_old.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun1930_old.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun2000_old.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun2030_old.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun2100_old.mp3
All of the links above will work until the evening of Sunday the 18th, when they will get overwritten with the next Sunday Special. Update: it's now too late to download these; contact me if you want the show and I'll make a CD for you.
For the past 6 years, I've also been doing a regular monthly show on WREK called the "Eyedrum Archive Sunday Special". Starting in August 2002, on the first Sunday of every month I would host a two-hour show playing material recorded live at Eyedrum, and would frequently have guests in the studio to talk about past and upcoming events. It was a great way to keep up with what was going on at Eyedrum and in the city in general. While I do a lot of things for Eyedrum, I don't actually get out to see actual events there too often, so this was another way for me to stay plugged in. Alas, over the past year I kind of got tired of it and decided to wrap it up. The last show was in October 2008, so it had a good 6-year run.
While I was at the WREK studio finishing up that last Eyedrum show, I took a look at the old Sunday Special binder, in which are recorded the playlists of every single SS show that's been on WREK over the past 20+ years! Hundreds and hundreds of fascinating shows on every conceivable musical topic, as diverse as WREK itself. I had done a bunch of shows over the years, so I flipped through the binder and wrote them down.
21-Jul-1991 -- Gang Of Four
16-Feb-1992 -- My Bloody Valentine
15-Mar-1992 -- Savage Republic
13-Mar-1993 -- Jawbreaker
09-Apr-1995 -- The Replacements (early 81-85)
03-May-1998 -- Tom Cora / Curlew / Skeleton Crew
01-Jul-2001 -- King Crimson (with Keith Lee and Doug Hughes)
14-Jul-2002 -- Sonny Sharrock (with Jim Moran)
04-Aug-2002 -- first Eyedrum Archive Sunday Special (monthly for 6+ years); appearances by Jeff Rackley, Robert Cheatham, Nisa Asokan.
18-Aug-2002 -- Umm Kulthum
13-Jul-2003 -- 7-inch Sunday Special (Jim Moran dumpster diving)
14-Dec-2003 -- Civilization, Phaze III; synclavier with Jeff Rackley (R.I.P. Frank Zappa 1940-1993)
15-Feb-2004 -- Late 60's Psychedelic (with Doug Hughes and Gene Thompson)
06-Jun-2004 -- John Cage
04-Sep-2005 -- tribute to Robert Moog (RIP 1934-2005)
16-Jul-2006 -- tribute to Syd Barrett (RIP 1946-2006) with Keith and Lynn Lee
30-Sep-2007 -- Arthur Lee / Lee Hazlewood tributes (with Keith and Lynn Lee)
06-Jan-2008 -- Stockhausen tribute (with Stewart Gerber and Chris Swartz)
27-Apr-2008 -- Atlanta Electronic Music (with Kevin Haller and Jim Combs and other guests, promoting City Skies festival)
I also put a note in that binder to not throw it out! I want that thing if they ever decide they don't need it anymore. I mean, just the shows and playlists by Thomas Peake alone would be worth the effort to salvage it.
Update Oct 2009: I missed one above, the Tom Cora show in 1998. Also, my closing comment above about the Thomas Peake shows turned out to be terribly prescient. Please visit www.peakecast.org to see what I'm doing in memory of Thomas.
