Airwaves

by Brian Goslow

My favorite Halloween memory is the year cities and towns gave their blessing to a two-day candy-gathering holiday (it was 1966, if memory serves, when sickos hadn't started mixing razor blades with candy apples, and we watched the premier of I Dream of Jeanie while homeowners retrieved our treats). Thanks to the luck of the calendar, this year is another two-niter, allowing Fran Ritchie, who was away last Saturday, to return to the crypt for another of his annual Halloween Rock and Roll Party shows on WCUW (91.3 FM) on November 1 from 9 to 11 p.m.

He'll air newly dug-up holiday classics, including the Crewnecks' "Rockin' Zombie," Jackie Morningstar's "Rocking in the Graveyard," the Frantics' "Werewolf," Round Robin's "I'm the Wolfman," and "Boogie Man" and "Frankenstein" from the recently released box set by the Cadillacs (of "Speedo" fame), along with traditional skeleton shakers by the Cramps and Fuzztones mixed among sound effects and stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

THE STATE OF INDIE ROCK as we near the end of 1997? It's getting harder to find artists doing their own thing. Thus I was inspired to receive the new catalogue from K Records in Olympia, Washington, where owner Calvin Johnson (of Beat Happening and Dub Narcotic Sound System fame) continues to promote doing things for yourself. "Home taping is a required course," his opening salvo reads. "Johnny Appleseed had the right idea, homegrown tastes best, decentralize the means and distribution of your substance, cultivate strains outside the Petri dish of corporate culture. Decentralize your taste buds. The emperor has some new clothes but guess what? They fall apart after the third washing."

Kind of like the new generation of ska. Last spring, with widespread recognition of the genre seemingly imminent, Joe Gagne's Thursday Night Ska show, which airs from 8 to 10 p.m. on WCHC (88.1 FM), was always filled with two hours of top-rate material. Maybe last week's show was an off-week, but it sounded as if bandwagon hopping has diluted what's being put out under the ska label and caused some of its more-established acts to look for a new sound.

The Pietasters' "(I'm Part of the) New Breed" sees the Washington, DC-based group giving us a taste of how Otis Redding would have sounded backed by a ska band, while the normally flawless Bim Skala Bim sound like a failed folk rocker trying to revive his career by playing the blues on their version of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over" (from Universal). They need to stick to their guns and produce tracks like Mr. Review's contribution to the Skankin' Around the World compilation, "Losing My Mind," whose trombones and calypso beat make you think you could reach right over for a rum cola, or the Mad Caddies' "Big Brother," which sounded as if the band had spent ages trying to find the secret to the Roots Radics sound that backed many of Jamaica's best records in the 1970s and '80s. The secret? It comes from the Earth, man!

KULA SHAKER'S "HUSH" from the I Know What You Did Last Summer soundtrack sits atop the current Top Ten Songs at WSCW (94.9 FM). It's followed by Sublime's "Caress Me Down," Reel Big Fish's playful cover of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf," Green Day's "Hitchin' a Ride," and "Song 2" by Blur. L7's making noise with "Off the Wage," while fellow Californians Goldfinger return with "Lonely Place." The chart concludes with Another Society ("Piece and Me"), the Foo Fighters ("Everlong"), and the omnipresent Chumbawamba ("Universal").