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Our first and only original programming of this Seollal shortened week sees a tribute to "The lead of the brothers, and killer of the Klan" Tone Loc along with a bevvy of new funk & soul singles, then Dan Lloyd rounds out a busy week in new rock to close it.
"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.
Feb 3, 2022
The Drop with Danno
Tone Loc – Loc’ed After Dark
Daytoner – Time
Melanie Charles feat Marlena Shaw – Woman of the Ghetto (Reimagined)
Mica Millar – Preacher Man
Moonchild feat Rapsody – Love I Need
Swatkins feat Moorea Masa & The Mood – Lost & Alive
Darius feat Khadja Bonet – NOTHING TO ME
Topher James & Biscuit Brigade – Waiting on the Colors
Nurdjana – What If I Love You
Vendredi Sur Mer – Le Lac
DJ Cam – Tropical Gypsy
Kutiman feat Mejja – Timam
Nina Simone – My Baby Just Cares For Me (HONNE Remix)
I.
It is 20 hours past midnight after a long new years break here there and everywhere in Korea, and as the sun has risen on the year of the tiger, it’s time to put one in your tank with our Sampled & AMPED Thursday throwdown, with tonight’s funk punk soul rock jam swerved into the tiger’s stripes as February 3, 2022. This is Danno Happy New Year (KOR) to all of you tuning in now or later, keepin on with the keep on from the mic in studio 2 GFN HQ right in the heart of downtown Gwangju, how do you do? Thursday night is here, so it’s time to clear the air with our Sampled funk & soul foray for the first hour, with lots of new tunes to showcase until we hit the top of the clock again, notably from the likes of Moonchild, Darius, Nina Simone and many others in the more stank area of the music matrix. Dan Lloyd right as rain and right on time will be in after that with our AMPED rock feature for the week, so lots to do and/or get through before the show self-destructs for time at 10pm. So, new year or not, it’s time to look back to 1989 and start getting loc’ed because it is after dark, and we’ll summarize all the tones after we let them bump away into space. THIS is The Drop.
Tone Loc – Loc’ed After Dark
Back on The Drop, all ready for the tiger as lunar new year has come & gone. Hope you had a great extended weekend and enjoyed your time with friends and loved ones. This is Danno of course, I had a great weekend myself, and we just started as per usual with our TIGHT (or) feature to begin things moving forward by looking back.
That was Tone Loc with the title track to his debut LP from 1989 called Loc’ed After Dark. Notable as on this date, the hit single Wild Thing became the first hip-hop single to go platinum with sales of over 1 million copies.
A perfect bit of inuendo for the time, “wild thing” of course is slang for that thing you can’t talk openly on the air, and many talk show hosts like Arsenio Hall at the time used it so as not to arouse the TV censors at the time.
“Wild Thing” samples Van Halen's "Jamie's Cryin'” and was not the first time an Eddie Van Halen guitar riff helped a black artist appeal to a white audience: Eddie played the guitar solo on Michael Jackson's "Beat It," which helped make that song a huge hit. Both Wild Thing and Funky Cold Medina were huge hits off the album at the time, charting very high as singles.
Now as far as what you just heard, the title track to Loc’ed After Dark is still a great bump, sampling Edwin Starr’s “Easin’ In” from the 1973 LP Hell Up In Harlem. Too bad the hard gangsterism expressed and cursing on the tune doomed it to not get airplay at the time, but that is a killer beat.
Big up to Tone Loc, the leader of the brothers and killer of the Klan. Yesssss.
#9870, @gfnthedrop, pod.
So now that old stuff out of the way, it’s time for some new biz and up next we have Daytoner to be followed by Melanie Charles and Mica Millar, all of which we’ll discuss further side opposite the funk. THIS is The Drop on your Sampled funk & soul Thursday night.
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The Drop recommissions for the final verbal jousts on the mic for the first quarter tonight. Danno here, keeping the levels just right, and we hope you’re doing alright tonight. Dan Lloyd will be back in studio for the 2nd hour tonight and our weekly AMPED rock feature will be in full effect then, but for right now, let’s get to the liner notes and nerd out a bit on the info...
Daytoner - Time (…this is a group that’s been around since 2015 and was started as a solo project by DJ Moss, who’s gotten some high praise and airtime from BBC6’s Craig Charles, amongst others. This single is in anticipation of the group’s new album set for release later in spring of this year, but no further details available on that just yet it would seem.)
Melanie Charles feat Marlena Shaw – Woman of the Ghetto (Reimagined) (…another reimagining of a funk & soul classic right here, which actually dropped last year on an album called Y’all Don’t Really Care About Black Women. Melanie is a rising vocalist of Haitian descent which she wears very proudly, and she is based in Brooklyn.)
Mica Millar – Preacher Man (…this is a very fresh face here in 2022 making her debut, and Millar hails from Manchester in the UK. The song is about an encounter with a preacher that inspires the protagonist to reach for their dreams, rather than getting bogged down in capitalist work and other such things.)
So, let’s get in a couple more cuts to finish off the first half tonight, and up next is the latest from Tru Thoughts with Moonchild and Rapsody with a joint called Love I Need, which is from the Starfruit LP out February 11. And then we’ll finish the first fourth this evening with a cut called Lost & Alive, which is the latest from Swatkins along with Moorea Masa & The Mood, and that’ll do it for quarter one this evening. THIS is The Drop’s Sampled funk & soul Thursday night.
Moonchild – Love I Need
Swatkins feat Moorea Masa & The Mood – Lost & Alive
II
The Drop returns as we begin part 2’s high def audio slow motion movement. Danno here, this is what I do every single night between 8 & 10 on GFN, and we’re getting AMPED with Dan Lloyd once again later on for our weekly game of throwing rocks on the air. As to what we just bumped let’s get to the details on those first two cuts of our 2nd stanza…
Darius feat Khadja Bonet – NOTHING TO ME (…the latest from the Parisian downtempo & lo-fi artist is out and an interesting collab here for sure, although just a standalone single. Darius is a big fan of Bonet ever since she put out her first couple of albums, and in a statement said he’s very proud to have been able to collab on this very sultry & extra smooth joint.)
Topher James & Biscuit Brigade – Waiting on the Colors (…this is the latest single to drop from the Ohio-based band’s upcoming EP, which is out April 9th. This is the first of a series of singles to drop over the next couple of months, and the EP is called Tell Your Story, dropping once again on April 9.)
#9870, @gfnthedrop, pod.
So, moving forward with the clock, which is our true master here on the air, we have another trio of new cuts to taste test off the board, starting with Nurdjana and then we got to get in some more French cuts with Vendredi Sur Mer and DJ Cam, all of which we shall parlez upon further after the ecoutee. This is The Drop on your Sampled funk & soul Thursday.
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Back on The Drop tonigth for the final yaddas of this evening’s first half. Danno here, studio 2, GFN HQ and going through a good amount of new & recent joints here in our Sampled funk & soul first hour. We shall of course be joined shortly after we make the jump to part 3 by Dan Lloyd for our weekly AMPED rock showcase, but for now, that was…
Nurdjana – What If I Love You (…interesting artist right here born in The Netherlands who now calls Canada home. Although she’s just kind of making her way in the music world, she’s no stranger to it, being the daughter Rob de Rijke, who is a singer-songwriter and guitarist himself.)
Vendredi Sur Mer – Le Lac (…this is an interesting Swiss-based singer-songwriter who we’ve had on our radar for the past few years since the release of her 2019 debut LP Premiers emois. With this tune just out last Friday she has announced a new album due out March 18 titled Metamorphosis.)
DJ Cam – Tropical Gypsy (…this is the title track to the French Touch master’s latest album, although we must state it is by no means new. Tropical Gypsy dropped last year in June, so do check in full if you liked what you heard there.)
So, we’re just about at halftime, but we’re gonna switch gears a touch with the latest from Israel-based Kutiman, and his latest collaboration single called Timam, which features the vocals of Mejja, who is an artist based in Kenya. Always interesting to see what and whom Kutiman is working with. After that, we have a new Nina Simone remix of My Baby Just Cares For Me done by the UK stalwarts HONNE, and that is going to keep us bizay until the jump to the 2nd half tonight. THIS is The Drop and that’s halftime.
Kutiman feat Mejja – Timam
Nina Simone – My Baby Just Cares For Me (HONNE Remix)
III & IV AMPED
Korn – Forgotten
The Linda Lindas – Growing Up
Lucy Dacus – Kissing Lessons
Bloc Party – The Girls are Fighting
Glacier Veins – Autonomy
Black Country, New Road – Bread Song
Gregor Barnett –Driving Through the Night
The Smile – The Smoke
Mighty Mighty Bosstones – The Impression That I Get
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – The Way It Shatters
Puppy – And Watched It Glow
Bright Eyes - Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
Korn – Forgotten
Korn’s new album, Requiem (the band’s 14th) is out tomorrow. It sounds like Klassic Korn, which sounds as fresh as you’d expect from a band that broke in 1994.
The Linda Lindas – Growing Up
Less than a year after their song “Racist, Sexist Boy” brought Riot Grrrl back to the cultural consciousness, teenage punks The Linda Lindas have readied their first full length album. Growing Up arrives April 8th on Epitaph Records, and the title track is out now.
After earning a first-rate musical education from the likes of Dum Dum Girls’ Kristin Kontrol at Girls School LA and producer Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, Best Coast, Bad Religion, and also father to two band members), The Linda Lindas — Lucia (14), Eloise (13), Mila (11), and Bela (17) — cut their teeth with gigs around LA. A recording from one of those shows — “Racist, Sexist Boy” at the LA Public Library — went viral, and the rest is history.
Soon enough, the quartet was performing on Jimmy Kimmel, signing to punk mainstay Epitaph, and recording an entire album. The result, Growing Up, sees the group address the perfect punk rock subject matter with syrupy hooks and guitar crunch.
Lucy Dacus – Kissing Lessons
Lucy Dacus has returned with an über-90s new single called “Kissing Lessons.”
A tale both incredibly niche and way too common, “Kissing Lessons” takes us back to Dacus’ girlhood, when she and her best friend, too young for boys, prepared for their future relationships with each other. While fuzz guitar buzzes over tinny, compressed drums, Mara Palena’s music video completes “Kissing Lessons”‘ retro feel, as a girl — dressed to the nines in a sunflower choker and heart-shaped sunglasses — lounges around among a collage of notebook doodles.
“Kissing Lessons,” along with Dacus’ recent single “Thumbs Again,” will be released on 7-inch vinyl on June 3rd. It marks her first release since last summer’s exceptional album Home Video.
Bloc Party – The Girls are Fighting
In April, Bloc Party are set to release their first new album since 2016’s Hynms. We’ve already heard the ’00s-post-punk-revival single “Traps,” and now the band has shared another single from Alpha Games called “The Girls Are Fighting.”
Lead singer Kele Okereke says of the track:
There was no specific incident that inspired this song – it was more a composite of lots of things I’ve seen over the years when being in clubs and seeing violence erupt with feuding love rivals. I’ve always had a slight obsession with those sorts of moments; like a fuse being lit, when actions turn from words into violence. You can learn a lot about who people really are in those moments. I think ‘The Girls Are Fighting’ is kind of self-explanatory – someone’s been selling dreams to someone they shouldn’t have and it’s caught up with them. I just wanted to capture that moment of going from naught to ten in an evening, in a sweaty nightclub. I’m really pleased with the arrangement for this track because it has this 1970s glam rock feel meets Adam Ant feel. I love what Louise is doing on the tom toms.
Glacier Veins – Autonomy
Portland dream-pop punks Glacier Veins released one of our favorite punk albums of 2020 with their debut LP The World You Want to See, and we also included them in our list of bands leading the current pop punk revival, so we're excited to learn that they've just announced their sophomore album, Lunar Reflection, due March 11 via Equal Vision (pre-order).
"Lunar Reflection is an album about going inward to create a better understanding of oneself through reflecting on one’s relationships with other people and with the world that we live in," says singer/guitarist Malia Endres via press release. "The Moon carries extensive symbolic meaning, and the journey through and connection with the depth of the Moon’s symbolism inspired the songs on the album and reflects the meaning of this album as a whole."
The album includes the band's 2021 single "Cover Me," as well as the just-released "Autonomy," which continues to take the band's fusion of crowdpleasing pop punk and atmospheric dream pop in exciting new directions. "'Autonomy' is about creating a solid relationship with and having a solid understanding of oneself," Malia says. "I believe that trusting and loving ourselves is an important place to start when it comes to creating relationships with other people and putting ourselves out in the world in general. It allows us to set healthy boundaries and feel secure exploring the possibilities knowing that we always have a loving and understanding place to come back to, which is within oneself."
Black Country, New Road – Bread Song
Black Country, New Road frontman and co-founder Isaac Wood is leaving the band just days before the release of the London group’s sophomore album Ants From Up There. “Together we have been writing songs and then performing them, which at times has been an incredible doing, but more now everything happens that I am feeling not so great and it means from now I won’t be a member of the group anymore,” Wood wrote in a joint statement with the band. “To be clear: this is completely in spite of six of the greatest people I know, who were and are wonderful in a sparkling way.”
As a result of Wood’s departure, Black Country, New Road are canceling their upcoming North American tour. The band, however, is not breaking up and will continue to work “on new Black Country, New Road material going forward,” according to the statement.
Ants From Up There is due out this Friday, February 4, via Ninja Tune.
Gregor Barnett –Driving Through the Night
Gregor Barnett of The Menzingers has released a video for his new song "Driving Through the Night". The video was directed by Bob Sweeney. The song is off his upcoming solo album Don't Go Throwing Roses In My Grave due out February 18 via Epitaph Records. Gregor Barnett will be touring starting later this month.
The Smile – The Smoke
The Smile — Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s supergroup with Sons Of Kemet’s Tom Skinner — have released their second single “The Smoke” ahead of an ambitious round of livestreamed concerts this weekend.
“The Smoke” is built around a head-nodding bassline and the steady drumming of Skinner, with flourishes of brass also thrown into the mix. “It’s easy, believe me/ We should give ourselves another chance,” Yorke sings. “Let go of our troubles/ And do our caress.”
The new track arrives with an accompanying visualizer made from scratched processed 16mm film by Mark Jenkin.
Mighty Mighty Bosstones – The Impression That I Get
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’s decision to put their plaid suits away shouldn’t be a shocker. After all, the band’s debut LP, “Devil’s Night Out,” was released more than three decades ago.
But why now? By all accounts, the Bosstones were in fine form last fall when they played a raucous, well-received show at Riot Fest in Chicago, and they had a couple of concerts with fellow ska legends Madness to look forward to in 2022.
“The band would like to keep it private,” wrote Bosstones manager Darren Hill in an e-mail Tuesday. “It’s a very difficult situation.”
While no one is willing or authorized to talk on the record, two people friendly with the band say the vaccination status of Bosstones singer Dicky Barrett has something, or perhaps everything, to do with the band’s abrupt demise. Barrett, for his part, isn’t talking — he hasn’t been heard from since the split was announced Thursday — and no member of the band has responded to interview requests over the past few days.
What we know is that the Bosstones called it quits — “After decades of brotherhood, touring the world and making great records together we have decided not to continue on as a band” — soon after it was revealed that Barrett produced a song used in a video promoting an anti-vaccination rally in Washington on Jan. 23. Noted anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose group Children’s Health Defense organized the rally, was credited as the writer of the song.
We can’t tell you much about the tune, titled “Heart of Freedom,” because it’s been scrubbed from the Internet because of similarities to Graham Nash’s 1971 classic “Chicago,” including its indelible chorus: “We can change the world.”
In a statement posted last month on Instagram, Nash demanded that Kennedy, the 68-year-old son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, stop using the song and chastised him for his anti-vaccination views.
“I do not support his anti-vaccination position as the history of the efficacy of the Covid19 vaccines is well documented,” Nash wrote. “I believe in science and facts, and do not support such blatant disregard for either.”
Tuesday, Nash went a step further, joining his friend and former Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young bandmate Neil Young in pulling his catalog from Spotify because the streaming platform hosts “The Joe Rogan Experience,” a podcast that has amplified the voices of anti-vaxxers.
Of course, Barrett wouldn’t be the first rocker to rage against COVID vaccines, or view the pandemic through a conspiratorial lens. Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, The Stone Roses’ Ian Brown, and Joseph Arthur have all expressed skepticism or downright distrust of vaccines and mass immunization.
But in addition to the breakup of the band, Barrett’s vax status may have cost him his job as the announcer on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” a position he’d held since 2004. A source says Barrett was informed last fall that he would need to be vaccinated to return to work on the show. Then, three weeks ago, ABC announced, with no explanation, that Barrett had been replaced as announcer by comedian Lou Wilson, who works as a writer for Kimmel. A spokesperson for the show did not respond to two requests for comment this week.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – The Way It Shatters
When Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever released their great sophomore album Sideways To New Italy in 2020, we might’ve all been a bit naive enough to expect the band would be ripping around the globe on tour for a year or two afterwards. RBCF band always seemed to be on the road, and obviously that still didn’t come back the way we all would’ve hoped in 2021. But here’s a silver lining: RBCF used that time to write and record another album. It’s called Endless Rooms, and it’s out in the beginning of May.
Endless Rooms began as song ideas and demos traded back and forth amongst the five band members during Australia’s lockdowns. Then the band were able to get together during windows between lockdowns, at a house the Russo brothers’ family built in the bush in the ’70s. The setting was a big influence on the album, which features field recordings of surrounding nature; that’s the house on the cover. “It’s almost an anti-concept album,” the band said in a statement. “The Endless Rooms of the title reflects our love of creating worlds in our songs. We treat each of them as a bare room to be built up with infinite possibilities.”
Puppy – And Watched It Glow
Puppy have announced details of their second album Pure Evil, due out on May 6 via Rude Records.
The follow-up to 2019's The Goat, the trio say that LP number two "gave us a bit of purpose and something to cling on to" during the pandemic, and has resulted in a record that is both poppy and heavy (as is the Puppy way).
"I think we all liked how dumb it sounded," says vocalist/guitarist Jock Norton of the album title, "but then the dichotomy of the two words really resonated as well. Broadly speaking I think we’ve always tried to combine classic pop songwriting with a love of heavier music, and on this album I think we take that a step further with some of our loudest moments combined with some of our sweetest.
Bright Eyes - Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
Bright Eyes have announced an ambitious new archival project that finds the Conor Oberst-led project re-recording songs from their past. After moving to the Secretly Group label last year, Bright Eyes have set out to reissue their entire discography on Dead Oceans. Accompanying each reissue will be a six-song companion EP composed of reworked recordings of five album tracks, plus a cover of an artist that was particularly inspiring to the band at the time they recorded each album. All told, that’s 54 new recordings from Bright Eyes, and several of the tracks feature contributions from artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, and M. Ward.
“It’s a meaningful way to connect with the past that doesn’t feel totally nostalgic and self-indulgent,” Oberst said of the series in a statement. “We are taking these songs and making them interesting to us all over again. I like that. I like a challenge. I like to be forced to do something that’s slightly hard, just to see if we can.”
To kick off the project, Bright Eyes will release companion EPs to their 1998 debut, A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997, 1998’s Letting Off The Happiness, and 2000’s Fevers and Mirrors, on March 27th through Dead Oceans.