..since I’ve catalogued all the episodes of The Stranger in a Strange Land, including the wafting musical ephemera, I thought it would be worth a few hours of time to collate our (almost a decade’s worth!) of playlists…
You can see that I played a lot of Amon Tobin and DJ Shadow, along with Sun Ra… while some of these were certainly featured at times, they really served us well as entertaining instrumental tracks while discussions of current events and politics informed and outraged the listening audience. At last count, we had thousands of listeners a week. So I’m proud to have not only served the community with vital news updates and our inane ramblings, but also the plentiful dose of Hendrix and Zappa.
A few artists may have inflated numbers, if they had done a version of our theme, “In the Hall of the Mountain King”. By the end, I had sixty different versions!
By artist, the most played was Pink Floyd, followed closely by Hendrix. These in particular have plenty of tracks worthy of spotlighting, but also weird backings for our many discussion topics. In that same vein, the next most popular artists, in order, were Amon Tobin, Sun Ra, DJ Shadow, Gorillaz, Zappa, TMBG, Tom Waits, Charles Mingus and Miles Davis. You can tell it would be hard to separate into ‘instrumentals’ or non, since these were all proliferate. At least by artist, for individual tracks, it makes a bit more sense.
The top 20 most played instrumental tracks were (in order):
- Jimi Hendrix – Message to 9 from the Universe
- Sun Ra – Other Planes of There
- Bob James – Valley Of The Shadows
- Hardy’s Jet Band – Selected Sound
- Buckethead – Ghost Riders in the Dub
- Al Di Meola – Race with the Devil on Spanish Highway
- Human Instinct – Stoned Guitar
- Amon Tobin – Fast Eddie
- Amon Tobin – Straight Psyche
- Charles Mingus – Sextet/Eric Dolphy Meditations
- Miles Davis – Ife
- Man… or Astro-man? – Cyborg Control
- Dick Dale – Nitro
- Fela Kuti – Confusion
- Bartel – Natural Good
- Alan Hawshaw – The Tense Scene
- George Gershwin – Rhapsody In Blue
- Milt Buckner – The Beast
- Amon Tobin – Big Furry Head
- DJ Shadow – Blood on the Motorway
The top 20 most played tracks with lyrics (or spoken word), in order; and these are some of my favorite songs of all time:
- Charles Mingus – The Chill Of Death
- Average White Band – Stop The Rain
- Barenaked Ladies – Grim Grinning Ghosts (thanks to our many Halloween shows)
- Bill Withers – Soul Shadows (which was initially my outro to the show in 2008)
- Rotary Connection – I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun
- Baby Huey – Hard Times
- Edwin Starr – War (King Britt Remix)
- Humble Souls – Beads, Things And Flowers
- Large Professor – The Mad Scientist
- Gorillaz – Dracula
- Gil Scot-Heron – Winter in America
- Warren Zevon – Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner (Live)
- Baron Daemon & The Vampires – Ghost Guitars
- Wanda Robinson – A Possibility [Back Home]
- Pink Floyd – Shine On Your Crazy Diamond
- Leon Russell – Stranger In A Strange Land
- Gorillaz – El Mañana
- Frank Zappa – Muffin Man
- Tom Waits – Earth Died Screaming
- Nina Simone – Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
The most played versions of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” as our theme, in order:
- Marimba Belles – In The Hall Of The Mountain King
- Sounds Incorporated – In the Hall of the Mountain King
- Duke Ellington – In The Hall Of The Mountain King
- Electric Light Orchestra – In the Hall of the Mountain King
- Big Brother & The Holding Company – In the Hall Of The Mountain King
Honorable mention to the “Aeolian Piano Roll – Phantom Patrol” from the original Wizard of Oz (1903), which often served as an intro in the early days, or a quick outro in a pinch.
One of these days soon I will get the entire archive uploaded, though I am missing a handful of shows! (not counting the first half of 2008 that, I’m fairly certain, the radio monkey never bothered to record in the first place). Stay tuned!
Absurdist Noir 