Peter H & Syd Straw - KCRW Session 1986 complete

LOSSLESSS RE-POST

KCRW-FM “Snap” Session
Santa Monica, CA
Sept. 4, 1986

    
FM capture (Ex- sound quality, probably from master or first-generation tape)

  

Syd & Peter, lost in the music
Dennis Stein photo via Flickr

ROB SEZ: This groovy session includes studio banter with host Deirdre O'Donoghue (R.I.P.), and Ilene Markell plays bass and sings on one tune. This is a really enjoyable set because everyone is relaxed & having a great time. BIG THANKS to the taper, original uploader & Mark45rpm for supplying the missing tracks.

  
01 The Price of Love (Everly Bros. song)

02 Lonely Is as Lonely Does

03 Take Me for a Little While (Trade Martin song)

04 Next to the Last Waltz

05 Pushin’ It Back        

06 World On a String

07 Keep Up With You        

08 Kind of True (G. Palominos cover)           

09 Private Number

10 You Don’t Miss Your Water

11 Up In the Air

12 Diamond (P. Holsapple song, rec. by G. Palominos)

13 Darby Hall

14 I Want to Live (Ilene Markell composition, sung by Ilene)

15 Junkie Girl (W. Becker cover)        

16 We Were Happy There

17 Listening to Elvis*

18 final chit chat

      
         *first appeared on the Coyote Records comp Luxury Condos Coming to Your Neighborhood
  
WAV lossless files 

MP3@320

Musicians:

Peter Holsapple - guitar, vocals

Syd Straw - vocals

Ilene Markell - bass

Bonus feature: A Most Excellent

Blog Remembrance of This Recording

   

THE RUMPUS (therumpus.net)

December 20th, 2008

  

By Rick Moody

  
I think it was in 1986 or thereabouts that my friend Jim Lewis gave me a bootlegged cassette of a live radio appearance by Peter Holsapple and Syd Straw (with, I think, Ilene Markell, on bass and backing vocals — all of it taking place on KCRW). Jim was my close friend in college, and he went on to become a novelist and journalist. These days he lives in Austin, Texas. Chief among the many bands that Jim made me aware of, back then, were The dB’s, featuring Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey, and I became such a devotee of The dB’s and the other architects of the “Hoboken sound” that I actually moved to Hoboken (in 1985), and lived there for about seven years. I lived a couple of blocks from Yo La Tengo, and used to see Chris Stamey on the bus going into the city. I went to Maxwell’s, the club that served as the epicenter of the Hoboken sound, a lot. I got Bob Mould’s autograph there once. Anyway, the Straw/Holsapple cassette had something really luminous about it. Peter and Syd played a bunch of dB’s songs, those from LIKE THIS and THE SOUND OF MUSIC, as well, as some of Straw’s songs from the Golden Palominos album, BLAST OF SILENCE, on which she sang. And I’m pretty sure they covered their amazing duet, “Never Before and Never Again” [Rob says: apparently not — alas].

Somehow I’d missed the Straw era of the Golden Palominos. I had their first album, a much artier affair featuring Arto Lindsay, Bill Laswell, and John Zorn, et al. And I’d heard some of VISIONS OF EXCESS on the radio station, including “Omaha,” the song on which Michael Stipe sang. But it wasn’t until I heard the KCRW show that I understood what incredible singer Syd Straw was. I admired Holsapple already (and I ran into him on a plane once, when he was touring with Hootie and the Blowfish–and let me tell you there’s something strange about running into the heroes of your young adulthood when they are playing in Hootie and the Blowfish), and he shines on the bootleg, too, but Syd’s voice, which is part faux-country, part Broadway, and a fair amount Vaudeville, really struck something in me. Especially on songs like “Diamond,” Holsapple’s song from BLAST OF SILENCE, and “Listening to Elvis,” a Straw song from a Hoboken sampler called LUXURY CONDOS COMING TO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, Syd had some bittersweet (emphasis on bitter) and tragicomic (emphasis on tragic) quality that could not help but move even the casual listener. I wore out that cassette.

Read the rest of Rick’s great reflection HERE.