The Outage Is Over...

Our Internet access went kablooey sometime during the night, but it's back up now. (Those of you who listen on HD didn't notice a thing! See, there's a bonus for HD listeners...)

Tune in now and see what you were missing!

Tracklisting: Altrok Radio FM Showcase #284 (10/22/10)

By popular request, here's what we played last week on The Altrok Radio FM Showcase (which, of course, you can hear every Friday at 11pm on 90.5 The Night...)

(Artist - Song - Album)

Stoltz, Kelley - Little Girl - To Dreamers
Soft Boys, The - (I Want To Be An) Anglepoise Lamp - 7'' Single
Funeral Party - Finale - 'Finale' [Single]
Maximum Balloon - Apartment Wrestling (v's David Byrne) - Maximum Balloon
Liquid Liquid - Cavern - 12'' Single
Like, The - Wishing He Was Dead - Release Me
Klaxons - Echoes (Radio Edit) - Surfing The Void
Radio 4 - Dance To The Underground - Gotham!
Film School - Waited - Fission
Gay Blades, The - Try To Understand - Savages
Sham 69 - If The Kids Are United - 7'' Single
Old 97's - Every Night Is Friday Night (Without You) - The Grand Theatre Volume One
Ten Million Lights - Kill Yr Idols - Ten Million Lights
Passion Puppets - Like Dust - Beyond The Pale
Land Of Talk - Quarry Hymns - Cloak And Cipher
Ghostland Observatory - Miracles - Miracles [Promo EP]
Gang Of Four - I Love A Man In Uniform - Songs Of The Free
Gram Rabbit - Off With Your Head - Miracle & Metaphors
Costello, Elvis - Opportunity - Get Happy!
PVT - Window - Church With No Magic
Of Montreal - I Feel Ya' Strutter - False Priest
Crocodiles - Hearts Of Love - Sleep Forever
Echo & The Bunnymen - Seven Seas - Ocean Rain
Dark Dark Dark - In Your Dreams - Wild Go
Belle And Sebastian - I Want The World To Stop - Write About Love
Cake - Sick Of You - Showroom Of Compassion
Replacements, The - Hold My Life - Tim
National, The - Terrible Love (Alternate Version) - Single
Beach House - 10 Mile Stereo - Teen Dream
Psychedelic Furs, The - Pulse - The Psychedelic Furs
Walkmen, The - Angela Surf City - Lisbon

Remember, we've thrown a bunch of the videos for these songs into our latest playlist over at YouTube - why not kick back and check 'em out?

And of course, we've added all of the above to our ever-expanding library at Altrok 90.5 HD2, our over-the-air HD Radio station. Tune in; there's lots more where that came from.

Pinfield & Santiago At A Doll's Place: NEW DATE

November 20 couldn't happen, so now November 13 will. A visit to A Doll's Place on that date will yield another opportunity to see the original man behind The Melody Bar doing what he did once again. (Yeah, yeah, FM106.3, MTV, Columbia Records, WRXP...he did/does that stuff, but ya can't take the Melody Bar out of him.)

More Altrok Videos For This Week

I've managed to creep (creep? Sorry, getting into Halloween mode) through the video collection at YouTube to pull out a selection of the new tracks we've featured on this week's Altrok Radio FM Showcase. Basically, a click over to our YouTube profile will open up the latest and greatest. There's some good stuff there - enjoy!

Smiths And Personal Bios Coming From Tony Fletcher

Tony Fletcher possesses a memory that guarantees that the formative days of the modern rock era will be well-chronicled, and a voice that guarantees that his account of the ride will be almost as fun as having been there.

Thus, two separate announcements from Mr. Fletcher:

A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT: THE SAGA OF THE SMITHS

My next project is an extensive biography of The Smiths, to be published by William Heinemann in the UK and Crown Books in the USA. Though there are several books available about this greatest of British bands, there has not been a serious attempt at a biography other than Johnny Rogan’s “The Severed Alliance” back in 1992. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has any book on the Smiths ever been simultaneously commissioned by an American publisher. As someone very much of the Smiths generation, a devoted fan who saw the group in concert many times while also working in the thick of things as a music journalist/magazine editor, I’m trusting I can do my subjects the justice they deserve. I’m excited to be telling the Smiths’ story with the benefit of two decades’ hindsight; I’m looking forward to focusing on the music, which would appear to be more influential now than during the group’s intense five-year reign in the mid-80s; and I’m anticipating approaching this from more of an international perspective as well.

Over the last several months, I have been conducting interviews with a number of the major players, and I’ll be spending most of November in the UK doing further research. I am interested in hearing from anyone who has anything to say about the Smiths. The book is slated for publication in 2012.

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BOY ABOUT TOWN

I mentioned this in my first and last full-on e-blast a year ago, and I’m pleased to say that, three drafts later, it’s finished (for now). Boy About Town tells the story, via a Top 50 countdown, of my childhood and teenage years in the pre-punk and post-punk music scenes around London, while also detailing the pubescent narrator’s equal obsessions with sex, the terraces and the pursuit of street credibility. I was fortunate to run a fanzine in the late 1970s that afforded me a ringside seat to one of the most creative periods in British cultural history, and the preservation of my interview manuscripts, notebooks, and diaries provided me with enough resource material to structure Boy About Town as a series of short stories that hopefully have the pace of a good novel. I can, hand on heart, say that I’m as happy with this book as anything I’ve ever written. A sample story from an earlier draft remains available online at my web site, here, though it was subsequently dropped from the final selection. I look forward to updating you on the book’s progress towards publication.

As always, we at Altrok wish Tony well on his upcoming projects, and note with some satisfaction that much of the music he discusses shows up sooner or later at Altrok 90.5 HD2. Ahem.

Altrok Showcase Video Sneak Peek

If you go to our new YouTube profile, you can see a few of the things we'll be featuring on this week's Altrok Radio FM Showcase - but for the full audio barrage, tune in at 11pm Friday night to 90.5 The Night.

Of course, there's always a fix available at Altrok 90.5 HD2 - just sayin'.

(By the way, Matt Pinfield and Pete Santiago's excellent adventure at New Brunswick, NJ's A Doll's Place last week has spawned a sequel, slated for November 20. You can hit the Corner Tavern in New Brunswick any ol' Saturday, though, where Drew and Iron Mike have the library handy that'll make you happy...)