Cassi-DJ: Today's Playlist (11.02.19)

Happy Saturday, all. Hope you're having a good weekend so far. Yours truly is enjoying the first day of a two-week vacation. I am pretty burnt right now (see the above photo, taken this morning), so this is a VERY welcome break. It's been a challenging year. I'm looking forward to some serious down time.

I started it off my sitting in with my friend Mike again on WMFO-FM's Mike on the Mic show this morning. We had a lot of fun, as we always do, and Mike was kind enough to let me program a set of my own. Here's what went down on the airwaves this morning. :c)

Leading off is the first track from The Dave Rawlings Machine's 2010 debut album A Friend of a Friend, "Ruby." Backing him up are his partner, Gillian Welch, as well as two members of Old Crow Medicine Show, Ketch Secor and Willie Watson (who has since left the band for a solo career and permanent membership in the Machine. Here's a lovely version recorded at KEXP-FM in Seattle; the wonderful baritone vocals are courtesy of Ketch. :c)

Next is a great song from Noel Gallagher & His High-Flying Birds 2011 self-titled debut album, "If I Had a Gun." Mike is also a longtime fan of Noel dating back to his days in Oasis; as Mike noted during the set, you recognize a Noel Gallagher song as soon as it starts. This is my favorite song from his three solo albums; one listen and I think you'll understand why:

Third song up is  Radiohead's "Daydreaming," a somber, hauntingly beautiful meditation that is believed to have written about the end of front man Thom Yorke's 23 year relationship with his long-term partner Rachel Owen. The song's video is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia); it is stunning, as you will see:

Filmmaker Rishi Kaneria made a fascinating short film about the video that examines the amount of though and effort that went into its creation; it is well worth watching if you are a fan of Radiohead or  Anderson.

Next is a tune from a band I adore that never received anywhere near the acclaim it deserved: Grant Lee Buffalo. This song, "Superslomotion," is a deep track (and a personal favoriteO) from what turned out to be their fourth and final album, Jubilee. Safe to say that they went out on a high note:

We had to cut my set short due to time constraints, but we nonetheless went out on a high note with another artist who is a favorite of both Mike and your humble blogstress: the pride of Ottawa Ontario, Miss Kathleen Edwards. "Change the Sheets" is from what looked for a number of years to be her final album, 2012's excellent Voyageur. This is a great live version on Late Night with David Letterman from 2012, shortly after the album was released:

Exhausted after years of unrelenting touring, she fulfilled a longstanding dream and opened a coffee shop, Quitters, in Ottawa. (I visited it last year and can vouch for both its coffee and delicious corn muffins. :D) Happily, she returned to the recording studio this summer to work on what will be her fifth album, hopefully out in 2020. Can't wait to hear it!