Here it is, the latest episode of Chas’ Crusty Old Wave, fresh out of the oven! It’s a humdinger as well if I do say so myself, with lots of killer tunes. Heck, any episode with both They Might Be Giants and Weird Al Yankovic is bound to be good, plus you throw in lots of original punk, an interview and music from Orlando band Potential Frenzy, some particularly brilliant but less-heard music from Bruce Woolley, Bill Nelson, Modern English, Joe Jackson, The Assembly, the Buzzcocks, Paul Collins’ Beat, and Georgia bands The Woggles and Hillbilly Frankenstein.

Oh wait, there’s more! How about a rare remix from Yazoo, some ska from the Toasters and Madness, and more great local music from The Hatebombs? And did I mention a bit from Monty Python? It’s all here, friends, in two hours of delightful fun.

Get your dancing shoes on — by the time Malcolm McLaren’s “Double Dutch” shows up, you’ll already be out of your chairs and dancing down the stairs! Enjoy.

COW #168 – Rock It to the Moon

WPRK threw a party and invited me … and, by proxy, you … to a celebration of 20 years since the first episode of what would become Chas’ Crusty Old Wave. I returned to Florida for the first time in nearly two years, and we did not one but two two-hour shows featuring the music we all love so much — the red-headed stepkids of the 80s!

Today, three months after the event, we present the first of the two anniversary shows, hosted by Phantom Third Channel and myself. We get on terribly well and giggle like schoolgirls reading Tiger Beat magazine when we talk about music and bands and records and stuff, and this shows in our several extended conversation breaks — but don’t worry, there’s lots of great music there, with an emphasis on Brian Eno, David Bowie and Elvis Costello. A lot of the tunes on this episode slot neatly into that all-too-brief era between the fall of UK punk and the rise of commercial “alternative” music. For a bit there, before MTV and in a few cases even before punk rock, there was a period where Weird Was Good. We touch on a lot of that with things like the Stiff Records single You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties by Jona Lewie, or Bruce Woolley’s original take on Video Killed the Radio Star, or Bow Wow Wow’s call for sonic revolution, C30 C60 C90 Go!.

We also hit some songs that are sheer nostalgia for me personally, within and without the New Wave movement — such as Love and Loneliness the most over-produced record in the world, and Monochrome Set’s odd little B-I-D Spells Bid, one of the very few songs written by and about the lead singer of the band. There’s also some Ultravox from both “eras” of the band, some bona-fide classics like Gary Numan’s Me! I Disconnect From You and more. You can grab your copy from the website or directly from iTunes.

Enjoy.