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Tonight we pay respect to The Pointer Sisters blazing trails in Hollywood, then it's all the new funky stuff for the first hour followed by the usual destructo ray from Dan Lloyd in hour 2 with our AMPED rock feature.
"The Drop with Danno" on GFN 광주영어방송 98.7FM in Gwangju & 93.7FM in Yeosu, Korea. An eclectic radio curation of all things musical spanning the spectrum every week. Broadcasting 8-10pm KST nightly.
Sept 29, 2022
The Drop with Danno
The Pointer Sisters – Waiting On You
Young Gun Silver Fox – Rolling Back
The Jack Moves – Seabra
Franc Moody – Cristo Redentor
Danny Toeman – Feel My Soul
August Charles – River
Danielle Ponder – Thoughts
Lyves – Shame
Lizette & Quevin – Grow Forever
Robohands – Wildflower
Surprise Chef – Drinking From The Cup of Bob Knob
Zakes Bantwini – Abantu
I.
It is 20 hours past midnight as another late summer day has come & gone, and it’s time to cool off tonight with our Sampled & AMPED Thursday night, this moment on the great timeline written onto the parchment as September 29, 2022. Our funk punk soul rock weekly tonight, and as always a busy docket awaits for the full two hours especially as Dan Lloyd brings the blown out amps and smashed guitars after 9 pm. Until then though, it’s time to let out all the stank for this week with our funk & soul showcase, with highlights from Young Gun Silver Fox, Lyves, and Danielle Ponder to let fly into space. For the start of things though, we pay tribute to The Pointer Sisters tonight as they made history on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, and we’ll discuss this trailblazing moment side opposite the waiting. THIS is The Drop.
The Pointer Sisters – Waiting On You
The second chapter of our Sampled & AMPED funk punk soul rock adventurism begins here in the first quarter tonight. What’s up Drop Tops (KOR), Danno setting it up, knocking it down, not clowning around on our Sampled funk & soul first hour. Dan Lloyd begins punching holes in your head later on with our AMPED rock feature coming up in parts 3 & 4.
We go back to this date in 1994 for our history feature tonight, and a bit of an amazing factoid as far as progressivism in Hollywood is concerned. That was The Pointer Sisters with Waiting On You, and it was today 28 years prior when the famed trio was given a star on the Walk of Fame. The star on Hollywood Boulevard was originally set to be unveiled in January, but an earthquake struck Los Angeles three days before the scheduled ceremony. The Pointers were the first African-American female music group to receive the honor, which given the talented female groups that preceded them by decades, doesn’t paint a very good portrait of Hollywood back in the day. Not saying that picture is not accurate in terms of Hollywood being a regressive, money-chasing hole because generally it still is.
Big up to The Pointer Sisters though, true trail blazers who got their due on this date in 1994.
Just a quick reminder…#9870 (50/100)…stream
Now let’s get into some new positive biz just out this week with Young Gun Silver Fox leading the way. We’ll follow that with new biz from The Jack Moves and then a cover of a super classic from Franc Moody to finish the noise. We’ll discuss all of this after they all jump into the sky & float down with the sounds, but for now THIS is The Drop on your Sampled funk & soul Thursday.
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Back up and at them on The Drop for tonight’s Sampled funk & soul first hour. What is snapping and/or tapping, Drop Tops (Korean)? Danno here on the mic in GFN HQ studio 2, and we just got our first hors d’ouvres trio right there for our all new funk & soul Thursday, so let’s get to the nutritionals…
Young Gun Silver Fox – Rolling Back (…the latest from Shawn Lee & Andy Platts is out in anticipation of their new album dropping October 21. Ticket To Shangri-La drops that Friday via Monty Music, and new label, but same quality from these two, the singles thus far have been smashing.)
The Jack Moves – Seabra (…this duo out of Newark, NJ is out with their latest, a killer combo of sultry soul and Afro-Latin flavors. This is the band’s latest single to their upcoming album Cruiserweight, and that album drops in full October 14.)
Franc Moody – Cristo Redentor (…this is the final 7” single to get released on the sequel to the first Blue Note Reimagined LP from 2020, and this final features what you heard right there London’s Franc Moody covering Donald Byrd’s iconic 1963 classic. Blue Note Re:imagined II drops in full tomorrow.)
Quick …#9870, social media.
Moving towards the first break tonight, we’ll switch it up a touch stylistically with a pair of tunes then we’ll have to jump or we all fall down. Danny Toeman is up first with a joint called Feel My Soul. This tune dropped just over a week ago, and is the perfect blend of experienced truthful soul and London edge that encapsulates the artist rather well…perfectly. August Charles is after that with another sweet soul burner called River, and that is going to be our final fire for this first part tonight. THIS is The Drop on your Sampled funk & soul Thursday night.
Danny Toeman – Feel My Soul
August Charles – River
II.
The Drop has started the slow burn in quarter 2 this evening, but we still got some heat goin on to start the 2nd staza right there. Danno here as always, and it’s Thursday before 9 so that means our funky first hour is in full effect that we call Sampled. Dan Lloyd of course joins us later on after we hit the top of the clock again for our AMPED rock and/or roll weekly...
Danielle Ponder – Thoughts (…can’t give this new album enough airplay, to be honest, and for those that don’t know, Danielle Ponder’s very very solid debut album is out everywhere and it’s called Some of Us Are Brave. Brilliant stuff.)
Lyves – Shame (…(sp.), this is the latest from the London-based Italian singer-songwriter who we’ve been following for a while now here on the show. This is the 2nd single to be teased from the upcoming album Change, due out November 18, and interested to see what other stylistic changes are on that LP.)
Now moving along, or at least prior to doing that…once again, (socials, text, on demand).
Next block we’ll go with some older stuff that we love and get in some obligatory Big Crown and Big Crown-releated stuff. We have Lizette & Quevin (sp.) to lead off, then it’s Robohands and Surprise Chef to finish off the audio triangle. THIS is The Drop on your Sampled funk & soul Thursday.
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Back with the verbosities here on The Drop as we hurtle towards finality of our Sampled funk & soul first hour then jump to our AMPED rock catechism in hour 2 with Dan Lloyd, so for now let’s draw out the triangle we just threw into the cosmos right there…
Lizette & Quevin – Grow Forever (…this is a tune off a 7” that came out in 2020 which grew from an impromptu recording session with Big Crown man in the middle Leon Michels. Quevin one of the members of Brainstory, and Lizette of course is the vocalist on this cut, although the artist usually works in ceramics.)
Robohands – Wildflower (…big up to our man Andy Baxter in London. We’d previously highlighted the release of his latest LP Violet, which dropped in early August but there’s always room here on the show to highlight Andy’s good work.)
Surprise Chef – Drinking From The Cup of Bob Knob (…now we highlighted the release of Iconoclasts recently, but we go back to 2019 with the Melbourne crew on the album before the last one called All News Is Good News. Up next is the band’s debut on Big Crown with their Education & Recreation LP, and that drops in full Oct 14.)
Moving along to halftime, we’ll head over to South Africa with Zakes Bantwini to close it off. The artist this week dropped a shorter version of Abantu, but we prefer the longer one that’s a bit older so we’ll go with the original of that cut to close proceedings here on the funky side. This is The Drop and that’s a wrap for the funky first half.
Zakes Bantwini – Abantu
III & IV AMPED
Weezer – Get Off On the Pain
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Eddie
OFF! – Kill to be Heard
NOFX – Darby Crashing Your Party
2nd Grade – Teenage Overpopulation
Titus Andronicus – An Anomaly
L.S. Dunes – 2022
Courtney Barnett – Words and Guitar (Sleater-Kinney cover)
Martha – Hope Gets Harder
Roshambo – The Crawl
Less Than Jake – Empty Lines
Gaz Coombes – Don’t Say It’s Over
Weezer – Get Off On the Pain
Autumn, the 3rd EP in Weezer’s SZNZ project, is out now. It’s enjoyably bland. This track is my favourite of the seven tracks on here, mostly because it was the only one I could really remember after listening to the whole thing. The verses are a little annoying here but I like how off-kilter they feel in comparision to the rest of the song, it reminds me of the band’s caution-to-the-wind approach of the old Pinkerton days.
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Eddie
Red Hot Chili Peppers have a new double album on the way, Return Of The Dream Canteen (October 14), their second album of 2022 following this past April’s Unlimited Love. They released “Tippa My Tongue” from it last month, and received the Global Icon Award at the VMAs not long after that.
Today, RHCP are back with a new single, “Eddie,” which is a tribute to the great Eddie Van Halen, who passed away in 2020. “Sailing the Sunset Strip, I’m a bit of a king/ Granny would take a trip, I’ll be bending the strings,” Anthony Kiedis sings on it. “Got hammers in both my hands, such a delicate touch/ They say I’m from Amsterdam, does that make me Dutch?”
“Sometimes we don’t realize how deeply affected and connected we are to artists until the day they die,” Kiedis says in a statement about the track. “Eddie Van Halen was a one of a kind. The day after his death Flea came into rehearsal with an emotional bassline. John, Chad and I started playing along and pretty soon with all our hearts, a song in his honor effortlessly unfolded. It felt good to be sad and care so much about a person who had given so much to our lives. Although the song doesn’t speak to Eddie by name, it talks about his early days on the Sunset Strip and the rock n roll tapestry that Van Halen painted on our minds. In the end, our song asks that you not remember Eddie for dying but for living his wildest dream.”
OFF! – Kill to be Heard
This Friday, the punk supergroup OFF! will release their first album in eight years, since 2014’s Wasted Years. Free LSD features a recently updated OFF! lineup — Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks), Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), Autry Fulbright II (…And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead), and Justin Brown (Thundercat, Flying Lotus) — and the lead single “War Above Los Angeles.” Now, OFF! are sharing a blistering follow-up single and video called “Kill To Be Heard.”
Just like “War Above Los Angeles,” the “Kill To Be Heard” video actually features footage from a forthcoming feature film centered around Free LSD. Today’s video also features a slew of cameos from D.H. Peligro (Dead Kennedys), Don Bolles (Germs), David Yow (Jesus Lizard), Davey Havok (AFI), cosplayer/actor Chloe Dykstra, Chris D. (Flesh Eaters), actor Chelsea Debo, and more.
NOFX – Darby Crashing Your Party
NOFX have today announced what will presumably be their final record as a band: Double Album, the aptly-titled counterpart to February’s Single Album, is out on December 2nd via Fat Wreck Chords. Until then, you can listen to the punk band’s new single “Darby Crashing Your Party.”
Inspired by his long-running goal to put out his own analogue to Off the Wall or The White Album, NOFX vocalist Fat Mike describes Double Album as “very enjoyable” and “maybe [their] funniest” release. Complete with unfiltered songs about cocky booking agents, a dominatrix, using the bathroom, and Stephen Hawking, Double Album is a perfect way to cap off NOFX’s discography — should they follow through with their plan to break up in 2023.
“You have to laugh at everything because the world is just falling apart and you have to have a good attitude not to take things seriously,” Fat Mike said in a press release. “So this is how I’ve always done it. I make people laugh every day. I usually do it in a self-deprecating way, it’s just how I go through life: I have as much fun as I can. That’s what life is — trying to find all the happiness you can. And spreading happiness. Which is what I feel like is supposed to be my job in life — spreading joy.”
“Darby Crashing Your Party” is one of the many songs on Double Album that drop a familiar name, this time paying homage to the late Germs frontman Darby Crash: “A middle class clown waging lower class war / A Beverly Hillbilly peeled off the floor,” Mike sings over a propulsive drum beat and fiery bass riff. Listen to NOFX’s “Darby Crashing Your Party” below, and then keep scrolling to see the artwork and tracklist for Double Album.
NOFX have promised a batch of tour dates before their breakup: “Next year will be our last year,” Mike recently revealed on Instagram. “We will be announcing our final shows soon. It’s been an amazing run.”
2nd Grade – Teenage Overpopulation
(****** fade this out after 2:30 because it gets annoying as fuck ******)
You can always count on 2nd Grade’s Peter Gill for bite-size power-pop gems. At 3:30, “Teenage Overpopulation,” the latest single from the band’s imminent Easy Listening (out this week), is more like regular-sized power-pop, but it’s a gem nonetheless. There’s some serious jangle on this one, as well as hooks galore and some low-key shredding on the bridge. “We never should have given smartphones to the generation/ Of teenage overpopulation,” Gill sings, among other zingers directed at the youths. But as he explains in his statement, he doesn’t have it out for Gen Z specifically:
“Teenage Overpopulation” pulls triple-duty as 1.) an anthem of protest against annoying teens (don’t take it personally Gen Z, teens have always been annoying), 2.) a critique of the absurdity of blaming young people for the world’s problems, and 3.) a meditation on our cultural obsession with youth. The title came to me first, followed by the realization that “warzones” rhymes with “hormones,” which was one of the greatest thrills of my songwriting career so far. The cherry on top is Jon’s solo, which sounds like a high school sophomore who finally unlocked the art of guitar tapping by studying Van Halen tabs.
Titus Andronicus – An Anomaly
Titus Andronicus has shared “An Anomaly,” the third single from its forthcoming album The Will To Live. Frontman Patrick Stickles said his intention was to write a song that evokes Eliminator-era ZZ Top covering Silver Jews, and we think he succeeded.
Stickles’ gritty harmonies carry the song’s “dissertation on humanity’s fall from grace,” while guitarist Josée Caron of Canadian rock band Partner blasts a striking solo. The video was directed by Stickles, who is seen singing, swaying, and stomping around Paris, inspired by Pusha T’s 2013 video for “Numbers on the Boards.”
“An Anomaly” resonates the most with the band’s prior work compared to the previously released “(I’m) Screwed” and “Give Me Grief,” which are all slated to appear on its seventh studio album, out Sept. 30.
L.S. Dunes -2022
When the new post-hardcore supergroup L.S. Dunes debuted “2022” at Riot Fest, singer Anthony Green called it “the most fucked-up song I ever wrote.” He elaborated, “It’s about learning how to get through shit so that you don’t want to kill yourself every day.” The studio version is out now, and it rips.
Some more from Green:
I wrote 2022 when I was struggling to communicate the pain that I was in during the pandemic. I survived an overdose the previous year and was feeling like I would never be free of the obsession to get high, or just get out of my own skin and that I was only going to continue to hurt everyone I loved. It was a cop-out and easier for me to write a song rather than get honest and real with the people in my life–cry for help in a way. If there’s a positive take away, it’s that it’s never a burden to the people you love to share your feelings no matter how dark or painful it might be.
“2022” originally appeared on Green’s solo album Boom. Done. but was removed from streaming services a month later. It now reemerges as the first song on Past Lives (November 11), L.S. Dunes’ debut album. It makes for a grand introduction. “If I can’t make it ’til 2022,” Green sings, “at least we’ll see how long I can swim.” The music matches that vibe, creating a swirling current of sound for Green’s voice to escape from.
Courtney Barnett – Words and Guitar (Sleater-Kinney cover)
Back in 1997, the great American rock band Sleater-Kinney released Dig Me Out, which might be their best-loved album. (I can’t, in good conscience, say that Dig Me Out is Sleater-Kinney’s masterpiece. That band’s got like five masterpieces.) Earlier this year, the band announced plans to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Dig Me Out with a new all-star tribute record, with different artists — Wilco, St. Vincent, Low, more — covering the songs from that classic. Today, we get all the details.
The forthcoming compilation is called Dig Me In: A Dig Me Out Covers Album, and it looks sick as hell. The band has just dropped the tracklist, which answers a lot of questions. Wilco, for instance, are taking on “One More Hour.” Low are doing “Dance Song ’97.” The honor of covering “Little Babies” goes to actual little babies the Linda Lindas, which should be a lot of fun. Married couple Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires are getting together for “Not What You Want.” Sleater-Kinney collaborator St. Vincent is handling the title track. For the tribute-album version of “The Drama You’ve Been Craving,” we’re swapping out Corin Tucker’s unearthly wail for another — that of TV On The Radio leader Tunde Adebimpe.
Along with the tracklist, Sleater-Kinney have also shared Courtney Barnett’s version of “Words And Guitar.” Barnett’s version is certainly a departure from the original, and it’s cool to hear her giving that song a bemused deadpan read. The cover also underlines the thing we’ll have to remember about this tribute. None of these covers are going to be better than the originals; that’s simply not possible. But they might bring out interesting new shades from the originals.
Martha – Hope Gets Harder
The singles from this upcoming Martha album (out October 28) are so good. “Beat, Perpetual,” title track “Please Don’t Take Me Back,” and the Futureheads collab “Baby, Does Your Heart Sink?” find the poppy UK punks in top form. So does today’s new offering “Hope Gets Harder,” a spry and spunky straight-ahead rocker with hooks and harmonies to spare.
Martha shared an impassioned statement about the song’s subject matter:
“Hope Gets Harder” is a song about England: a uniquely fucking terrible idea. A place governed by the most absurdly mediocre people in history. Selfish, rich, thick, malevolent ghouls propped up by a bootlicking, self-congratulating, stenographic, client-journalist news media that puts North Korea to shame. England is a grey, damp artifice, vibrating to a quasi-fascist background hum, where the majority live miserable hopeless lives, so that a tiny minority can live in extravagant luxury. As we lurch violently from one crisis to the next, it feels like the light of any hope for the future is slowly dying. But we have to try and find hope in one another, and together we have to fight like hell for a more socially and ecologically just world. No fate but what we make for ourselves. Abolish england. Fuck the king.
Roshambo – The Crawl
UK ska-punk band Roshambo (members of Faintest Idea, The Junk, Ducking Punches, and Blag) will release their debut album Survive, Revive, Revolt on October 21 via Pookout Records (UK/Europe), with Bad Time Records handling a very limited US release. They refer to the album as "a unifying call to arms for our scene, and a broken UK," and the first single is "The Crawl," an anthemic, hook-fueled ska-punk song with very catchy horns and a hint of a metallic side in those riffs.
Less Than Jake – Empty Lines
Less Than Jake has shared a their new track, “Empty Lines” alongside an acoustic version of “Dear Me.”
“This song feels like a familiar classic, with catchy horns and driving rhythms. Lyrically, I’m touching base with that all too familiar feeling you get when you trust someone and they let you down.” Says Bassist and co-vocalist Roger Lima about “Empty Lines.”
Silver Linings Deluxe is due out October 21 via Pure Noise Records and includes 2 full-band tracks, as along with 4 acoustic versions of album tracks. Pre-orders are now available.
Gaz Coombes – Don’t Say It’s Over
Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes has announced a new solo album, Turn the Car Around, that will be out January 13 via Hot Fruit Recordings/ Virgin Music. He says it completes the trilogy that began with 2015's Matador and 2018's The World's Strongest Man. "Turn The Car Around is a record that I’ve been building up to for the last seven years," says Coombes, adding the album "captures the ups and downs of modern life and all the small print in between."
The album includes this summer's single "Sonny the Strong," and he's just shared the elegant, widescreen "Don't Say It's Over" that Gaz wrote about the night he met his wife. "When I wrote ‘Don’t Say It’s Over’ I had in mind wandering through some bustling holiday town at night, two people sharing strange and beautiful moments together,” Gaz says. “The feeling of love and all its complications. And the reality of a life without that love. It’s basically saying (albeit with a few dark edges), ‘My life is better with you in it’.”