If you live in most Mideastern U.S. states, and especially Iowa, your probability of encountering a Pizza Ranch buffet restaurant are reasonably high. Regulars among you know of me making tangential mention of that eatery chain from time to time...so, why?


Because in the same way that you'll find a soundtrack of slick blues at a Famous Dave's barbeque joint or a mélange of Top 40 pop or commercial alt-rock at a Taco Bell, the 'Ranch' is also at least partially defined by its soundtrack. And that soundtrack isn't comprised of Western tuneage. Nope, it's cCm. Pizza Ranches operate as Christian business ministries. I'm Christian, so that's reason enough for me to be OK with that philosophy, but it's the curious thematic mishmash it conjures which truly captivates.


Pizza and BBQ'ed chicken? Or fried chicken, for that matter? The Wild West of Manifest Destiny fame and infamy? Contemporary Christian music? Are you, like me, thinking of Protestant Italians setting out in Conestoga wagons after crossing Ellis Island...with those wagons carrying futuristically anachronistic stereos playing catchy, doctrinally uncontroversial—if sometimes bland—Christo-pop from a satellite radio service? Well, better that the indigenous dwellers be subjected to Big Daddy Weave, Third Day, and Jars Of Clay than disease-infested blankets and addictive hootch, I reckon.


And though I live less than an hour from a pie parlor that offers oodles more toppings and arguably tastier crust than does the 'Ranch' in my town, theirs could be plenty worse. Plus, if you know of a pizza the Ranchers can make, and it's not on the table, you can ask for it and get first dibs on it when it's out of the oven. That's right neighborly of them. And if they want to count that kind of service as part of their ministry, they won't get any disagreement from me.

Whereas I once had many CD box sets in a delicate ecosystem-of-sorts atop shelving that held a goodly percentage of my single CD collection, now, as the result of a recent move, everything's all over the place.


And attempting to console me with tales of how everyone's goods are scrambled upon a change of residence won't give me that much comfort. Said changed residence is appreciably smaller than my previous digs, and, due to factors numerous and detailed enough for me to not want to broach them here, there's no changing the place.


To find the silver lining in this gray, nigh claustrophobia-producing cloud, the situation has forced me into paring down my collection some. The space Christian'y stuff, I give to the interdenominational youth center in my town. (Whether any of the teens in my city will appreciate the Buddy Miller and Southern gospel extras or advance discs I have is anyone's guess). The rest I may pass off to friends who are parents (the kiddie music discs, anyway) and friends I haven't met yet. (The latter is to say online auction buyers. But if any of you dears can tell me whether selling advance CDs is against the policies of eBay and other Internet bidderies, you'd be doing me a kindness. With everything else happening in my life, lately, the added tension of an RIAA investigation, and/or the wrath of whatever record companies whose pre-release CDs I'd be shilling, is the last thing I need.)

'Ever done something you never thought you'd get around to doing and had it go about as beautifully as you'd ever want? Rare, isn't it?


So has been RADIO BIRDMAN's presence in the U.S.. Their being from Australia and never having amassed more than a fervid cult following contributes significantly to their scarcity on these shores, I'd wager. But their American début, Radios Appear, was one of the first punk rock albums I ever owned when the Southern boogie rock-loving staffers at the Musicaland nearest to me gave me a promo copy (along with another—The Dead Boys' second longplayer) when I couldn't shut up about my enjoyment for punk, based largely on what I'd read about the genre. They had no use for the stuff and I, apparently, exuded enough charm, enthusiasm, and/or annoyance to get freebies out of them. All parties were happy.


The Adelaide band who took their name and not a smidgen of their sound from The Stooges was also the subject of one of my early CD box set purchases. And it remains the only Aussie import in my box collection.


Some might then justifiably think that my pouncing on the telephone to win a radio station prize of guestlist for two to see the guys was a move born of nostalgia. I'd have half thought the same. I'd heard three or so songs from their '06 reunion album, Zeno Beach (Yep Roc; and, perhaps, a better reappropriation of raw aural power than the latest by the Iggy Pop-led anti-pop idols from whom they nicked their moniker), enjoyed them but, for whatever reason, wasn't compelled to request a copy of it for review.


Silly me. Especially when Radio Birdman restored my faith in the power and creativity of rock'n'roll.

Big words, those? Yes, but they testify to a gargantuan force of sound. Guitarist Deniz Tek gave the lie to the idea that punk and virtuosity can't co-exist with squalls of riffage and choice solos. The yalp of singer Rob Younger hasn't aged nearly as much as the graying shag atop his bespectacled head. In a touching display of almost unpunk humility, Younger smilingly admitted not knowing how to respond when one fan in the front row of Madison, WI's High Noon Saloon showed the vocalist his forearm tattoo of the group's martial-looking logo. Aw!


Awe, however, was an appropriate response for the fercocity on display. And the probably near-fire-capacity crowd was comprised primarily of true believers, some from back when RB was in its '70s-'80s heyday, others discoverers via the band's Sub Pop Records compilation from a few years ago or hanging around us in the older guard.


Birdman's 17-song set list and five encores dealt more in the early fare than Zeno tracks, even excluding its titular tune that was a fave of Little Steven Van Zant on his Underground Garage, around the time of the album's release. Also, without a keyboardist in tow, the act's few-but generally affecting-forays into proggy psychedelia were left out of the night's fun.


Too bad on those accounts, but neither did those distractions diminish the power of a seriously underrated band (and that's not just nostalgia talking) wending their way, for likely the last time, through the country from which they gleaned many of their influences. (learn more); (learn even more); (learn more still)

A longtime fixture in Milwaukee's punk and reggae scenes and its Socialist Party chapter, who I knew from my record-shopping and concert-going trips to his city in my college years, ERIC BEAUMONT has kept me on his eMail blast list since some correspondence regarding the piece I'd written for a paper in his city about how this country could stand to have a maverick, nationally-known (and heard) disc jockey on par with the late John Peel. It had been too long a time since he and I had any face time, however.


With no services at my church during the summer, my Sunday night radio routine disrupted for what may be for good (more about that next!), and Beaumont's last gig in that timeframe with his MIGHTY DJANGO HI FI record spinning sound system at the Club Timbuktu African restaurant in the Brewers' burg, came the opportunity to make up for lost time with a friendly fellow music freak, grab some grub from an eatery the type of which would have a hailstorm's chance in Gehenna and, perchance, dance.


Most of those plans transpired. 'Had a scrumptious supper of seafood soup and veggie sambusas and some catching-up conversation with Beaumont about his recent internship at Jamaica's Alpha Boys' School (alma mater to many of the island's famed musical talents), his one-time embrace of—and current falling away from—Christianity, mutual music fiend friends, and the sounds we've both been grooving on lately. As lively and texturally-varied as the all-vinyl mix of reggae in most every manifestation, ska, rocksteady, post-bop jazz, and '50s R&B was geared to move feets and the bodies they support, this was more of a "listening" crowd.


And that was a copasetic situation, considering one of my fellow listeners was the man who Beaumont nominated as Milwaukee's own John Peel, Paul Host. Host has been Dj'ing at WMSE-FM, the station of the Milwaukee School of Engineering, since a few years before I and my high school's Key Club (junior Kiwanians, for the unfamililar) brought him in for a teen dance, where he was spinning too much New Wave in order to foment the incipience of a riot (no kidding), and this was after MTV had landed on my town's cable system.


Host and I caught up in much the same way Beaumont and I had, only the former introduced me to his wife (Beaumont's single). This wouldn't have been as eventful if his Mrs. weren't the sister of the lady who answers the phone at the radio station where I listen to the show of country music scholar Bill Malone, who I've called to request artists diverse as Homer & Jethro and Brother Claude Ely; it's also the same outlet from which I'd won the Radio Birdman passes. Small world (or, at least, state), huh?


A rejuvenatinging time with tasty food reconnecting with friendly acquaintances with whom I've so much music in common. (learn more); (learn even more); (learn more still); Also: www.WMSE.org and www.WORT-FM.org (where to hear Malone); Homer & Jethro; www.ClaudeEly.net (he has his own site, and Homer &Jethro don't?!!?)

DR. DEMENTO is off the air on the terrestrial radio station where I used to catch him every first night of the week—like cloclwork.


To go by what I've heard from that station's program director and corroborated by a media savvy friend with whom I went record shopping last month, it seems as if the king of humorous music broadcasting is now charging the outlets that carry his show somewhere in the neighborhood of $500/week to air his yukfest. Compare that with the shows hosted by Nick Michaels and Little Steven Van Zant, which preceded Dr. D.'s, here: they both share ad revuenues with the stations that air them. From my understanding of both music and talk radio syndication, this is the way the game generally works for all parties involved.


What I furthermore ascertained from my radio programmer friend—and could surmise from the lack of ads during the show—is that Demento has bupkus for syndicated advertising partners. HUH?


This calls for unprecedented action in the annals of Rake On Music history. It's time for an open letter to my favorite physician of funny:

I usually have little use for FABOLOUS, but his recent duet with soul smoothie NE-YO, "You Make Me Better", is rather sweet in the way its protagonists back down from their customary egotism to concede that their self-alleged perfection—or, at least, mightiness—is enhanced by solid relationships with their respective main squeezes.


What makes it a headscratcher, however, is the backing track that sounds like some kind of maritime Russian dirge. The tension of that minor key grind just plays well against the relatively sweet (but, in Ne-Yo's case, also minor key) sentiments, but is that the only reason it resonated with R&B radio listeners to take it to #1?


Could it instead/also be something that the plaintive, morose tuneage over which Fab' raps and Ne' croons represents the conflict of the individual's desire for autonomy versus need for companionship? If the ladies are so wondrous that they make the m.c. and singer in question into forces when they're together—though they were already "movements" by themselves—maybe that comingling of strong personalities produces the kinds of feelings that conjure angst-ridden Eastern European melody snippets easily as it does pride in the females generating those (otherwise?) good feelings.


Since I didn't keep up my subscription to Vibe after my last freebie run of it ended, and haven't bought The Source in at least a couple of years, I may never gain that insight. I guess I'll live.

Los Angeleans BODIES OF WATER remind me of a couple of my favorite acts. But to write about a band unique as they are with such journalistic shorthand wouldn't do them justice.


Their full-length first project, Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink (self-released) is about as innocent as it is arty, all spiralling harmonic wonderfulness, grounded in reality, but envisioning something better for themselves and the listeners they endeavor to inspire.


The half-guy/half-gal quartet's sound bumps punk into Broadway musical melodrama as both careen into gospel (they claim Afrimerican soul gospel influences, but I hear more Euromerican Southern gospel from them), gloriously crashing headlong into prog and Americana.


For as post-modernly mash-up sounds into a singular concoction, they sing of hope since abandonned by many since modernity's arrival. It's sweet, not cloying, and angular as anything in their melodic sensibilities.


Per their infectious joy, they apparently often have swams of people on their stage during concerts. That I'd like to see for myself. Just as I would like to see BOW on a triple bill with Danielson Familie and Sufjan Stevens, whose musical pathfinding the Bodies finesse and evolve into an expanded dimension of sonic delirium. (learn more)

Call it an experiment in apprecation.


'Listened to one CD each of The Essential double-disc sets by late virtuoso bassist JACO PASTORIUS and genius guitar whiz JOHN McLAUGHLIN and followed up those with the entirity of their single platter of complete work as TRIO OF DOOM, with deaceased drummer TONY WILLIAMS.


Fusion jazz, no matter the surfeit of rock and world music influences with which Pastorius and McLaughlin infuse their jazziness, still strikes me as music that's far more cerebral than visceral in ways that don't often engage my own cerebrum. Maybe that's just me, or maybe it's higher-falutin college friends plying me with the wonders of technical maestros such as Al Di Meola and Spyro Gyra.


Perhaps it makes sense, then, that the power-Trio Of Doom resonates most for me and maybe others of equally diverse tastes, who suffer from the same fusion jazz blockage. All the tricky, jaw-dropping runs, riffage and melodic interpolations of the guys on the stringed things have an equally inventive foil in Perkins, coming together as a trinity feeding on each other's energies, with no party to the festivities outpowering the other. This seems arguably the case all the more on the tracks from the threesome's only concert appearance at a festival in Cuba.


Diffident as I still may be about the aforementioned artists' genre, overall, I'd be interested in hearing more. And if one isn't in the Hollywood pipleline yet, how about a biopic about Pastorius? His life of turbulence and talent looks ripe for Oscar bait. (learn more); (learn even more); (learn more still)

Let's see...raving over Radio Birdman, running into the radio maverick of one city and writing an open letter to one of my favorite national radio hosts...

Is radio a recurrent theme this month, or what?


Maybe a little more than usual, as PLAYRADIOPLAY!'s first EP, Frequency (Island) caught my ear.


My guard usually goes up when an act's name forms a complete sentence (a bit nonsensical maybe, but think of the bands whose names work out that way) and that the one-17-year-old band born Dan Hunter has opened for misogynistically horny emo kings Fall Out Boy could have me putting my forearms in front of my face. But PRP wins me over further than those caveats would have had me think he would.


North Texan Christian pacifist Hunter has a bit of emo self-reflection—mostly about how he wishes he were at least old enough to vote. But PRP's real innovation isn't so much his affiliations and deprivations as his combinations.


Hunter mixes the earnest youthfulness of pop-punk with electronics dance flavor. The clever part is that the songs retain pop-punky structure in the face of their begging for the right remixers to take them to the mirror balls and smoke machines.

The more impressionistic he gets, the better he comes off. Hunter gets downright snotty on a remake of a hit by The Killers; though it's a fresh interpretation of a song that fits PRP's facination with '80s synth-pop—not to mention Hunter's vocal similarity to Robert Smith of The Cure—it it fails to sync with his five originals.


Hunter seems like a swell kid. A little naïve, possibly, but a sweetheart who claims he's not making music for female attention or massive riches. Let's hope he can stay that pure, keep exploring his keyboards, and get over fetishizing his youth. (learn more); (learn even more)

POPPY & THE JEZEBELS! Great name for a band, yes? That's what caught my attention when scanning a recent U.K. independent label sales chart. And, in a first for me, following up on seeing that landed me a copy of said CD to write about for you.


P&The J's premiere EP, Follow Me Down (Reveal, U.K.) musically rewards the promise of the Birmingham ladies' moniker and the fun of their character-specific looks (hey, The Spice Girls number among their influences, alongside The Slits). Shambolic near collapse trades off with hushed, skeletal prettiness. Tender sentiment finds occasional room amid catty vitriol. And they breach the gamut of post-punk England 30 years after the so-called Summer of Hate, always with a charmingly lo-fi noisiness.


Can all that playfully botchy goodwill result in a worthwhile full-length album? I'm thinking so. (learn more); (learn even more)

Send music, sound effects, comedy, anything you think would amuse and/or enlighten me to:

Mr. Jamie Lee Rake
P.O. Box 29
Waupun, Wisconsin 53963-0029
USA

Vegetarian, goat, lamb and fowl recipes are also appreciated.