This week I played a show by The Mountain Goats from 'Bottom of the Hill' in San Francisco all the way back from 06/23/2005. I first became aware of the Mountain Goats through that wonderful Showtime show we all grew to love and hate called Weeds. At the end of one of the episodes they played the song Cotton, which I found sad and beautiful, but at the time lacked the patience to listen to some of the more rawly recorded songs in the tMG catalogue. It wasn't until late in college when I was forced to reevaluate my lack of interest in him/them when a kind of roommate of mine talked on end about his love for John Darnielle. Well here I am finally taking his advice and loving it, by playing almost the entire concertfor my show.

The Raocow quotes are mainly from Super Mario World 2 +, but some of them are reused from previous shows due to the amount needed to seperate between all of the short Mountain Goats songs. Of course I only reused ones that I really liked.

Oh, and thanks to the people at www.themountaingoats.net for their wonderful site, which allowed me to check all of the lyrics to make sure they were suitible for the radio.

Lettuce repeat show

Umphrey's

This week I decided to play something a little different than I normally do, and went with the distorted guitar rock of Steven Malkamus and the Jicks. Having been recommended their album 'Real Emotional Trash' by my friend M@ I was eager to track down a live show by them. Luckily bt.etree.org had exactly one, and that's what we heard this last week. For those of you who don't know who Steven Malkamus is, he might be more familiar to you as 'that guy from Pavement', but whether or not you know who he is, I hope that the concert was still enjoyable.

The Raocow quotes weren't from any particular game this week, just a mix of some of the best ones I found recently while looking through some of his recent LPs that I haven't seen yet

This week I played a show by Lettuce from all the way back in 2002 (07-19) from The Great American Music Hall. I had never heard of Lettuce until last week when I was hanging out on Turntable.FM and someone apologized for not playing Lettuce because all of the songs they had were from Archive.org and 'the quality wasn't good enough'. Incredulous I decided to look on Archive to see if I could find a show with decent enough sound quality to play over the air waves on the real FM. I immidiately found one in the top three most downloaded Lettuce shows, and did just that. I liked it (and the band name) enough to make it the focus for this week, as for the quotes for the most part they are courtesy of the wonderful Enormatron who is in large part responsible for the fiasco I like to call Cat Planet.

This week I played a Built to Spill concert from 10/03/2010, played at Higher Ground in Burlington VT. Although I personally was not at this concert, I saw BtS when they played in Cleveland on the same tour, and the setlist was almost identical. I remember pressing my face to Doug Martsch's Amp while he went wild on 'Wherever You Go' and singing along like a fool when they covered 'Ripple' by the Grateful Dead. The sound quality is a little subdued, but at least it's never too harsh, and the crowd noise is minimal.

For those of you who don't know much about Built to Spill, you should listen to them more. I saw them at Lollapalooza back in 2006 and was blown away. Unfortunately I got them confused with My Morning Jacket, and it took me 3 years to rediscover them, when a fellow radio host invited me to go see them at the 'ol Grog Shop. Thier music is incredibly written, and thier covers (whether they be Cortez the Killer, Freebird, or Ripple) are spot on. Even though the multiple layers of guitar are the main draw for most, thier lyrics, while unobtrusive, are beautiful and frighteningly insightful. Long story short they went from being unknown by me to one of my favorite bands in the span of a month. If that's not enough for you BtS heavily influenced Modest Mouse, especially on thier album (my favorite) The Moon and Antarctica.

The Raocow quotes this week are from VIP 5, which I didn't even know Raocow had started recording, let alone had over 40(!) videos of. Well, I've loved the other VIPs and this one is also pretty great graphics wise. The quotes are plentiful, though Raocow seems to be burning out (as usual) near the end. Still it's a good watch, and a fun listen.

This week on Cat Planet I played a show by Elliot Smith from 04/09/1998 at the Black Cat Theater in Washington, DC. Like my favorite Elliott Smith Show from 01/31/2000 this show is all acousitc. The thing that sets this show apart is that Elliot's voice is stronger and the surprising amount of covers that he plays. Not only is there a John Lennon Cover, but also a Big Star cover as well as a Zombies cover. The covers are both abundant and deft, with a sort of heartfelt feel to them that makes it clear that Elliott knows and loves the songs as well as his own.

For a different view of Elliott Smith, I recommend listening to his concert from the Black Cat where he plays with a full band. The songs are electric and aggressive with a fast double speed feel to a lot of them. Of course Elliott is a master of differing soundscapes, with his album Either/Or being entirely recorded by Elliott (layering different tracks of audio he taped in his basement) while his album From a Basement on a Hill features a full orchestra, but even so it is strange to hear these sorts of transitions manifest live.

This week on Cat Planet, I played the 04/09/2004 show by the OM Trio at Martyrs in Chicago. The show features Jake Cinninger, a guitarist from Chicago based band Umphrey's McGee, as an addition to the Trio's normal line-up. The second to last song played, Glory, is actually a composition by Cinninger and is played regularly by Umphrey's. The groups get along so well that in 2009(?) they released an album called OMPhrey's where three members of Umphrey's and the normal OM Trio played as a sextet. I Highly recommend checking out other recordings by both of these bands.