Boogie Chitz

Fifteen track gift from Analog Africa proving that you can't spell Funaná without F-U-N. Bemba Restrepo's discovery on the shores of São Nicolau adds an extra jolt of weirdness to the traditional sounds of Cabo Verde.

Keystone Berkeley ran live music shows for twelve years and also served as a favorite hangout spot for rockers living in the Bay Area. Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia were two of those  - and had been ripping it up together regularly for a year and a half when they decided to record their action to tape. Live at Keystone was the result and is a real-time capture of a musical friendship between two fat guys at peak electric output.

Gelli Haha is a new act and it is my job as Mr. Cool music show host to alert you of her existence. Switcheroo is fun-ass dance music - slammers about Italian desserts and pissing in glass jars that sound more like little electric kisses than songs.

I love Bleached tremendously - so it's on a curve when I say Welcome the Worms is one of the better no-fuss rock records of the past decade - a controlled frenzy of catchy songs made by an instantly-likable band. Also - the Canseco Twins find themselves on a path to fantasy fulfillment - turns out that fantasy is only four blocks away.

Before Daft Punk got the robot sex change operations and became the sound of global gloss there was Homework - the self-financed and home-recorded debut. And it's fantastic.

While not the most coveted 'Mats LP - Hootenanny is the one that got them out of the icy Jesse Ventura-ness of their beloved Minnesota - and on the road to alt-rock knighthood. This is where Paul Westerberg began to fully embrace the joys of socially ergonomic songwriting...sometimes.

Here we are blessed with a baker's dozen of Anatolian-flavored funk nuggets via the side project of a Swedish film and television composer.

The eponymous third aka Grey Album from 1969 began the second half of the VU's run - the forgotten half - when they were an actual touring rock and roll band trying to pop big. No Warhol, no New York City and no John Cale. A deep track dynamo without the literal AND figurative feedback of the past. Lou's older brother Roy shows up though.

Back to Zamrock with Amanaz (Ask me about nice artistes in Zambia). The group only made one album - 1975's Africa - but that's all that is needed to ingest the 'One Zambia, one nation, three chords' spirit.

Led Zeppelin return from the meadows of Bron-Yr-Aur, shave the beards and begin another three album run that would lead them to the top of King Shit Mountain. They would get one last look from its peak with Physical Graffiti - a deep track orgy that showcases Zep at full creative mast.

A new wave band made up of musically-gifted members of Frank Zappa's backing band, Missing Persons dropped a solid debut in 1982 that's kind of a paradox - loose music made by the tightest of musicians. Oh, and they also had a singer that nailed Prince.

The same year their Seattle cohorts made flannel globally sexy Mudhoney stayed local and loyal to their friends at Sub Pop and released Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge - an unrelenting pounder that sounds the beating heart of the Grunge Hunx Dynasty.

Disco was becoming played out in America at the start of the 1980's but it was just getting started in Italy. Pino D'Angiò landed a YMCA-level Italian hit with the song Ma Quale Idea in 1980. The following year he unleashed the full Power of Pino with his debut LP Balla! This is Italo-Disco at it's Satanic best.

WoV was way too loose with the drizzugs to build any sort of career sustainability - but they managed to uncork the forgotten classic Call of the West along the way - angular art rock that cuts through the collective 1982 whoosh of parachute pants.

The Ghetto Brothers were one of thousands of street gangs that skulked the busted-ass neighborhoods of the Bronx in leather vests during the 1970's. I think they are the only one that formed a band though. Power Fuerza is the lone musical relic left behind by the good-guy gang known as the GB's.

Hair Hunk Titans Poison fought their way thru pubic lice and a universally-perceived lack of talent to crank out their debut - Look What the Cat Dragged In - an overachieving classic squeezed into a 1986 already overstuffed with guitars, drums and spandex pant.

During the 1970's while China and Vietnam were busy playing grab-ass and keep-away with the Spratly and Percocet island chains in the South China Sea, the other countries surrounding the water like Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia funk'd their way into the next decade. Ayo Ke Disco, curated by Alice from Soundway Records, provides us safe listening passage thru this fantastic sea of sound.

LCD Soundsystem is an exhaustive one-hundred minute affair that showcases the best of what the combination of rock and dance music can become when crafted by the hands of an erudite music nerd. LCD eponymous - the start of a relatively flawless catalog that continues into the now.