Saturday, February 10, 2024

150th Episode Special! - Hippie Love Turbo Radio Show

This episode of Hippie Love Turbo, on KUCR 88.3 FM, we looked back at some of my favorite songs from the last 150 episodes. Over the course of the show, I've played more than 3,000 unique songs and if you were to listen to every episode back to back it'd take over 6 days straight to finish them all. It's been a ton of fun listening and curating songs from the obscure and recently rediscovered to well-known hits and everything in between. Cheers to another 150 episodes and, as always, the playlist is at the bottom!

 

An old flyer from when I first started my show Deliberate Discord

Way back in 2010, when I was first getting settled as a transfer student at UCR, I contacted the station by hounding the staff during concerts at The Barn and by visiting their booth during "nooner" events at the Bell Tower. Eventually, I wore them down and became part of the staff which kick started my journey in radio. My show at the time was named Deliberate Dischord (because misspelling stuff is cool) and featured noisier music in the vein of punk, indie, and experimental artists. I continued my show for a few years before taking a break while figuring out life. Eventually the pandemic hit and I floated the idea of starting another show which is what became Hippie Love Turbo.

 

Left: My first day of training Right: Hanging out during my old nighttime slot

If I go even further back, I discovered my love for radio as a kid, after visiting a local country music station to pick up tickets my mother had won through a contest. I was amazed by the simplicity of the building. In my head I imagined a huge skyscraper lined with walls of TVs and a bustling staff of fashionable 20-somethings zooming around with CDs and tapes, listening booths, and high-tech computers. Instead, the station sat inside an unassuming strip mall office with a lobby that looked like my pediatrician's. After the veil was lifted, I began calling into radio stations, hamming up my little kid voice, knowing that some DJs would air recordings of my requests. Somewhere I still have tapes of me and my friends speaking in phony southern accents, asking the DJ to play Dwight Yoakam. 

 

An old schedule showing my 2 hour block. Found in The Highlander.

Flash forward to my high school days when I started consuming music through the internet as opposed to whatever I found in the discount bin at The Warehouse or Sam Goody. I mainly listened to web streams that I found through Real Player and Winamp. In particular I remember listening to a lot of KUCI, specifically a "goth" show that had a very patient DJ that tolerated my calls and AIM messages.

Towards the end of my senior year in high school, I started streaming my own internet radio show using Shoutcast and Winamp. My audience hardly ever reached more than 4 or 5 listeners at a given time. It was fun but took a lot of effort for little reward. I remember my most popular stream was a Smiths special that was inspired by one of my favorite teachers and I was psyched that 14 or 15 people were listening.

 

Nowadays, my main goal with Hippie Love Turbo is to provide the same feeling of discovery I had during my youth. Nothing beats finding a DJ or radio station that has its own story that has existed long before you became aware of it. 

Eventually, I would like to expand my blog to cover more of the local history of garage and psych music in Riverside so if you happen to have been around the rock scene in the IE during the '60s, feel free to contact me! A lot of our local music history isn't well documented online so I suggest you go out and bug your family for those old photos, recordings, and newspaper clippings.

Anywho, that's it for this episode's rundown! Thanks for reading the blog and be sure to listen over the air on KUCR 88.3FM on Saturdays at 9pm PST or listen to an archived version of the show here. You can also listen through KUCR.org, Radio Garden, or Tune-In

Check out this week's playlist below:

  


Saturday, February 3, 2024

Exploring White Sands and Soviet Surf - Hippie Love Turbo Radio Show - Code Word "Chinese Artichoke"

This episode of Hippie Love Turbo, on KUCR 88.3 FM, started with a solid block of surf tunes to get us out of our rainy weather funk. A lot of the songs you heard on this episode are rare and therefore not on Spotify but don't fret, you can hear them by following the links at the bottom of this post. Of course, you can listen to this week's episode again on the KUCR Archive, but beware, each archived show is only online for a few weeks before they're taken down. If you haven't had your KUCR fix after that, be sure to check out KUCR's YouTube page which recently added some videos of their trip to NAMM. Anywho, let's dive into some of the topics I covered during this week's episode!

First, I want to talk about White Sands' Vampire Drug Party which was one of the few modern songs I've ever played and, get this, the band is from New Mexico. I didn't know you could hang ten in Albuquerque! The song features some lovely spring reverb drip and follows the band's previous release Live Dirt & Reverb which contains covers of songs originally performed by Satans' Pilgrims, Link Wray, and The Astronauts. I was turned onto the band by DJ tina bold from Audio Hijinx and she tells me that their guitarist and producer Chris V. is a long-time listener of KUCR, which is always appreciated. 

Afterwards, you heard a couple songs from a compilation of Soviet surf rock with the complex name SurfBeat Behind The Iron Curtain Part 2 - Planetary Pebbles Vol.3. The other volumes of Surfbeat feature tunes that I'm sure will find their way into future episodes because they are fascinating glimpses into a world of surf that I was totally unaware of. If you want more information on the groups featured on the compilations you'll have to dive into the Russian web because, if you thought a lot of American garage bands were obscure, try learning about rock groups from Soviet satellite states! 

An excerpt from one of Olympic's long form music videos
 

While I didn't really find any information about the group Singing Guitars, who you heard after White Sands, I was able to gather some history on Olympic, who played the track Mary, Mary. It turns out the band was (and still is?) fairly popular and continues to perform to this day, although it appears that there are no longer any founding members in the group besides Petr Janda, who may not have been an original member. According to various, and confusing Google translated sources, the band was from Prague, Czechoslovakia and formed from the ashes of another band named Karkulka. The group really switched things up in the '70s and made a few prog-rock albums before dabbling in some heavy metal-ish tunes during the late '80s. A few of their releases were in English and remind me of Alice Cooper during his "Blackout Era", some select Pink Floyd songs such as Comfortably Numb, with a sprinkling of Blue Oyster Cult. Try listening to Kraj, odkud odletěli ptáci and tell me it doesn't sound like a lost demo from Fire of Unknown Origin. It's unusual stuff but I find myself listening to more and more of it. Help.

When I was talking about Olympic, I mentioned another band that was at one time named Olympic Hopefuls before they were legally forced to change their name due to the word Olympic being trademarked by the United States Olympic Committee. I hadn't really thought of the band in a while, but I remember having a few tracks floating around on CD-Rs that I'm sure I got from the now (and very sadly) defunct website Epitonic. If you are feeling nostalgic for that early 2000s indie sound, I suggest listening to their debut album The Fuses Refuse to Burn which reminds me of The Shins or Grandaddy although it might sound a little saccharine to modern audiences. Who knows, maybe I'll make a playlist of songs I found during that era of music where I'd scrap music from MP3.com, MySpace, Epitonic, and various blogs. 

And finally, I closed the episode with Carole King's version of Crying in The Rain which she co-wrote with Howard Greenfield for The Everly Brothers. I think King's version highlights how The Everly Brothers' vocal performances enhance the song and build upon its solid pop structure. During the show I talked about how the song has been covered by many different artists but the versions by Danzig and a-Ha stand out for their unique twists on the song. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to you!

Well folks, that's it for this episode's rundown! Thanks for reading the blog and be sure to listen over the air on KUCR 88.3FM on Saturdays at 9pm PST or listen to an archived version of the show here. You can also listen through KUCR.org, Radio Garden, or Tune-In

Check out this week's playlist below: