Dug Deep's blog

Jonathan Segel spent a good deal of his childhood in Davis and is best known for being the violin player in Camper Van Beethoven, but he holds a master's degree in music composition and has a LONG list of collaborations and solo material, much of which is truly exceptional. Tonight we will highlight his 2003 solo release Edgy Not Antsy. It's at different times trippy, minimalist, dreamy, poppy, flourishing, and experimental—and always lots of fun. The songwriting is largly observational, and the subject matter ranges from alienation ("Losing Touch") to "Civil Disobediance" to mindless consumerism ("World of Suckers") with lots of wry humor tossed in. Tune in at 5 pm PT tonight. Dug Deep hosts.

In 1990, experimental avant-garde jazz saxaphonist John Zorn released the album Naked City, a fun, schizophrenic and noisy collaboration with Fred Frith, Joey Baron, Yamatsuka Eye, Bill Frisell, and Wayne Horvitz.  Naked City (as the group became known) was about the most far out you could get, and Zorn’s exploration of what he “could come up with given the limitations of the simple sax, guitar, keyboard, bass, drums format” became the pinnacle of avant coolness. The result was a post-modern hybrid that cut up sequences as he saw fit and treated all genres equally: jazz, grindcore, country & western, and much more were allowed to coexist, even in the same song.  The album has 26 cuts, several that clock in at under 30 seconds. Naked City is melodic and dischordant, familiar and unpredictable, sweet and explosive.  

This week’s album of the week will be Camper Van Beethoven’s New Roman Times.  A true concept album, New Roman Times was the band’s 2004 reunion/comeback record after having been dormant for 14 years.  The concept was strange (what would you expect from CVB?), but intriguing, involving a plot about a fictional America divided into smaller republics (most notably the secular Republic of California and the Fundamentalist Christian Republic of Texas) that are at war with one another.  The band employs some none-too-disguised political jabs as well as indulges their taste for 1970s-style prog rock, mixed with Middle Eastern melodies and ska-based rhythms...All in all, a very fitting selection for KDRT’s Album of the Week in this very lively election season.  Dug Deep hosts this edition of Album of the Week.