Yello • Point
The recipe for Yello’s bass-heavy, rhythmic, mid-tempo groovecake has not changed in forever, and it still makes the ideal soundtrack for putting on your sunglasses and slouching down in your seat.
The recipe for Yello’s bass-heavy, rhythmic, mid-tempo groovecake has not changed in forever, and it still makes the ideal soundtrack for putting on your sunglasses and slouching down in your seat.
It’s been 45 years since Chrissie Hynde initially hit her stride with the Pretenders, and she hasn’t slowed down for anybody since.
Born Ruffians hail from the Great White North, and they have an innate ability to craft razor-sharp hooks out of the simplest of riffs.
It was a peaceful suburban street, and they had taken great care to select a vehicle that would not stand out when parked along its sidewalks, a gold Taurus wagon. The very familiar nature of the setting — the shading trees, the mottled but well-kept asphalt, the toys scattered on lawns — made it feel like one of the most exotic places they’d been to in a while. The cartographer checked the coordinates on the fancy device strapped to their wrist, but any web search could have found them Brewster, New York. The ethnomusicologist leaned against the mailbox, labeled “Marie”, and scanned the canopy of the tremendous spreading oak planted square in the middle of the lawn, eyes peeled for that squirrel.
“Did you say you wanted FIVE?” asked the turkey-leg vendor, his incredulity betraying the slightest bit of Norwegian accent. The crowds at the Trondenes Middle Ages Visitor Park thronged past as the young man counted the hands available to the pair before him, performed a simple matching algorithm to the five turkey-legs being requested, and came up with a non-computing value. “We’re hungry,” offered the machinist helpfully. The gymnast kept an eye out for Sverre the allodialist. They needed to have a few words with him about the land titles, preferably in the privacy of the sleek three-man catamaran that had discretely brought them here. The half-darkening of the sky that passed for night at these latitudes meant the usual tactics were out and they would have to convince him to come willingly.
The screen door banged against the frame of the small building that was once Cisco, Utah’s non-bustling post office. It’s like a ghost town abandoned by the ghosts, mused the cinematographer. Whatever once haunted this place left out of boredom. Meanwhile, the blacksmith methodically tapped the foundation along the perimeter of the building. They had brought the infractometer over from the side-by-side they had arrived in, but sometimes the old ways worked best. The rhythm etched out a Namibian bossanova that had been popular in the ‘70s. The entrance to the silo complex had to be near.
It’s back to a regular schedule, at least for the foreseeable future, and it’s good to be back with the usual cast of characters. A rare and rainy night in the Grand Valley, perfect for this random gallop through some haphazard old stuff and sparkly new stuff.
This is my first time seeing the sun rise from the studio. There's been plenty of sunsets, and plenty of times when I was on the air at the time but in a windowless studio.
Since I was guest host The Orbit Lounge and this was not The Lacking Organization, there was more selection and sequencing going on than usual, with the end result being a good hill climb from warm sleepiness to aerobic panic. Thanks to Lisa from Florida and Geoffrey from France for checkin