The Album: Otis Redding The Very Best of Otis Redding (1992) Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart is the son of a record producer and session player who blessed him with the gift of The Very Best of Otis Redding, the 1992 compilation of sixteen of the best songs from the late Otis Redding's catalogue. His father gave him instructions for listening - the charge to learn all about feel. We talked about the nuances of jabs and riffs and Otis Redding's pathos, his restraint, Otis' use of "uncool words" his pench...
Jan 24, 2019•50 min•Ep. 70
The Album: Ol Dirty Bastard: Return to the 36 Chambers (1995) "Ain't no father to his style." That's how Ol Dirty Bastard was introduced to the world on 1993's Enter the 36 Chambers by hip-hop's posse supreme, the Wu Tang Clan. At the time, we got an inkling of ODB's eccentricity but on that first Wu album, so overloaded with personalities, it was hard to pluck him out of the stream and think "he might be the Clan's most memorable talent" but two years later, sandwiched between a stream of solo ...
Jan 17, 2019•49 min•Ep. 69
The Album: Cyndi Lauper She's So Unsual (1983) She's So Unusual dropped October 14th, 1983, and introduced much of the world to Queens' pop punk tough girl Cyndi Lauper. She presented as a colorful character with colorful hair and colorful homies and charmed her way into pop culture with ten tracks recorded for CBS at the Record Plant, NYC. The former front woman for rockabilly band Blue Angel took a demo written by Philly rocker Robert Hazard and retooled it to become an anthem for her and the ...
Jan 10, 2019•47 min•Ep. 68
The Album: Parliament: The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein (1976) In the 1970s, no single artist was as influential in transforming the sound of funk as George Clinton. If the funk of the late '60s was embodied in the sparse, frenetic rhythms of James Brown, Clinton filled out and polished the sound across the '70s, with beefy banks of horns and raucous guitars. By the time The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein came out in the mid 1970s, the P-Funk sound was in full flower and that's when a young DJ from outs...
Jan 03, 2019•45 min•Ep. 67
The Album: David Bowie Young Americans (1975) Super cool Grammy winning writer and archivist Lynell George came to know David Bowie's music through celebrated Los Angeles radio station KGFJ . KGFJ blasted the sounds and she received them courtesy of a wrap around Panasonic radio. (Salute!) She was attracted to the Philly soul sound ever present on David Bowie's Young Americans because Philly soul was in her DNA as she is the daughter of a Philadelphia Native. David Bowie's desire to pay homage t...
Dec 27, 2018•49 min•Ep. 66
The Albums: Vince Guraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) Andy Williams' The Andy Williams Christmas Album (1963) Stax Records' Christmas in Soulsville (2007) Heat Rocks was hyped to have film critic Alonso Duralde (The Wrap) , one of the hosts of Maximum Fun's movie podcast Who Shot Ya? guest with us to talk about our favorite Christmas songs, holiday fare, songs that should play when it's cold outside, baby. We visit the canon of Christmas music over the years (Andy Williams 1963 The Christ...
Dec 20, 2018•57 min•Ep. 65
The Album: Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) 2018 has been a tough year for Kanye West and Kanye West fans. He's showed up in unlikely places and waxed problematic about virtually everything , earned the ire of some of the West Coast's most loyal representatives , inspired critical analysis , all the while releasing Ye, his eighth solo album, an album as part of a group, and executive producing albums for Teyana Taylor, Pusha T and Nas. Sure, he's been booked and busy, but also...
Dec 13, 2018•50 min•Ep. 64
The Album: Kanye West: College Dropout (2004) Kanye has had a... not great year . From a public relations standpoint, it's been nothing short of a disaster. And yet...'Ye remains one of the most intriguing (if not also infuriating) pop acts we have, evinced to us by the fact that two different guests - rapper G Yamazawa and R&B legend Macy Gray - both asked to talk about Kanye West albums when they came on our show. By further coincidence, they came on the same day to tape which also happene...
Dec 06, 2018•54 min•Ep. 63
The Album: J*DaVeY The Beauty in Distortion (2008) Heat Rocks co-host Morgan Rhodes is a huge fan of J*Davey and a huge fan of Iman Omari. Naturally she was beyond thrilled when Iman accepted an invitation to come on Heat Rocks and chose J*Davey's 2008 brilliant debut album "The Beauty In Distortion" to discuss. J*Davey's breakout project was one of the jewels in LA's emerging future soul scene a decade ago. Their sound, a fusion of soul, synth, funk and pop gained a million fans and caught the ...
Nov 29, 2018•34 min•Ep. 62
The Album: Drakeo the Ruler: Cold Devil (2017) When we invited L.A. music writer Jeff Weiss to join us, he was adamant that there was only one release he wanted to talk about: Cold Devil, the full-length, acclaimed mixtape that the upstart Los Angeles rapper, Drakeo the Ruler, dropped nearly a year ago. Drakeo is part of the Stinc Team and is helping lead a wave of emergent talents that also includes 03 Greedo, Ketchy the Great and Ralfy the Plug. The longtime writer behind The Passion of the We...
Nov 22, 2018•43 min•Ep. 61
The Album: George Michael: Faith (1987) In the fall of 1987, it wasn't a foregone conclusion that George Michael's solo debut, Faith , would be a hit. As successful as Michael had been as half of the Wham! duo, going solo was always going to be a risk but as it turns out, it was one worth taking. Faith turned out to be a runaway hit, not simply a #1 album but spawning four different #1 singles, including the lively title song which became the best-selling song of 1988 in the U.S. It wasn't witho...
Nov 15, 2018•52 min•Ep. 60
The Album: Janelle Monae: Dirty Computer (2018) To close out our Women Behaving Boldly mini-series, we brought things all the way up to the present by tackling a 2018 album. Our guest, music writer and journalism professor Evelyn McDonnell wanted to talk about Atlanta's Janelle Monae and her recent LP, Dirty Computer. Between her various alter egos and concept-driven albums, Monae's been a critic's darling since she first broke out ten years ago and the intervening decade hasn't dimmed her creat...
Nov 08, 2018•56 min•Ep. 59
The Album: Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998) On August 25, 1998, Lauryn Hill, the breakout rapping/singing star from The Fugees released her first (and only) solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. On August 25, 2018, exactly 20 years later, the Heat Rocks crew invited author Joan Morgan to join us to talk about that album and her new book about that album, She Begat This . Call it a happy coincidence, call it kismet but either way, call it an amazing conversation. It's di...
Nov 01, 2018•50 min•Ep. 58
The album: Madonna: Like a Prayer (Sire, 1989) For the fourth installment in our Women Behaving Boldly mini-series, we spin the clock back to an episode we first aired a year ago: Ann Powers, talking about Madonna’s Like a Prayer from 1989. From the beginning, we knew this episode in particular would make a perfect fit with the WBB series. After all, few pop artists, female or male, have done more to transform the pop landscape since the 1980s than Madonna, often times inviting scrutiny and crit...
Oct 25, 2018•41 min•Ep. 57
The album: Betty Davis: They Say I'm Different (1974) As part of our "Women Behaving Boldly" series, we decided to re-air the episode that launched Heat Rocks: our interview with future soul trailblazer and architect Joi Gilliam. This was one the pilot episodes we recorded in the spring of 2017 and when we left the taping, we turned to one another and knew this show had potential. The pairing of artist and album came from Morgan and it was inspired: the undersung Betty Davis, one of the most ori...
Oct 18, 2018•35 min•Ep. 56
The Albums: Aretha Franklin: Young, Gifted, and Black (1974) Aretha Franklin: Jazz to Soul (1994) Aretha Franklin: Rare & Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul (2007) Heat Rocks had always planned to sit down with DJ Lynnée Denise, an LA-based DJ and music scholar, but when Aretha Franklin passed on August 16th, we invited her to come talk with us about the Queen's life and legacy as part two of our series Women Behaving Boldly. What a fantastic decision! Admittedl...
Oct 11, 2018•58 min•Ep. 55
The Album: Millie Jackson: Caught Up (1974) Some months ago, Oliver and Morgan kicked around the idea of celebrating women over the course of a few Heat Rocks episodes. We decided we'd package it as a series and Oliver came up with the name "Women Behaving Boldly". Gotta love it. To kick off the series, we chose the incomparable, ahead-of-her-time, OG provocateur Mildred Virginia Jackson known professionally as MILLIE JACKSON. Millie Jackson is the Queen of Raunchy Rap. She spent much of the sev...
Oct 04, 2018•44 min•Ep. 54
The Album: The Rolling Stones: Exile On Main Street (1972) In 1972, The Rolling Stones were at the peak of their success...and excess. In order to flee British tax collectors, Keith, Mick and the crew fled to France where, over the course of many months - and a ton of drugs - the group pieced together what would become an epic double album. It would take Mick dragging the tapes to Hollywood to complete production but once finished, Exile On Main Street would become embrace as one of the group's ...
Sep 27, 2018•52 min•Ep. 53
The Album: "Mosquita Y Mari" soundtrack (2012) Aurora Guerrero is a Chicana filmmaker whose 2012 sweet coming-of-age story about two young Chicanas falling in love in Huntington Park was hit at Sundance that year. The Hollywood Reporter called it "...a robust work of self-discovery for two girls at the most awkward and confusing years of their young lives, and a testament to Aurora Guerrero's storytelling prowess." Traditions and emotions merge as the Yolanda and Mari's relationship grows intens...
Sep 20, 2018•45 min•Ep. 52
The Album: Minor Threat: Minor Threat (1984) In 2003, James Spooner released Afropunk , a personal love letter/manifesto dedicated to people like him: punk fans of a different shade whose acceptance in the scene was often hard-fought and tenuous. That became a movement, with annual afropunk festivals becoming entities unto themselves, across the world. Spooner is now a tattoo artist and graphic novelist, living in Los Angeles. For our episode, Spooner joined us to talk about Minor Threat's self-...
Sep 13, 2018•47 min•Ep. 51
The Album: Joni Mitchell: Court and Spark (1973) In 1973, Joni Mitchell was in the midst of one of the greatest pop music runs of the decade. By that time, the Canadian-turned-temporary-Angelino had already put out Ladies of the Canyon, Blue and For the Roses , establishing her as one of the very few women that the rock establishment of the era would deign to even recognize. But with Court & Spark , Mitchell showcased her abilities beyond just the folk-rock world by minting a pop album that ...
Sep 06, 2018•44 min•Ep. 50
The Album: Björk: Homegenic (1997) Josiah Wise aka serpentwithfeet joined us to talk about one of his biggest influences: Björk and 1997 album, Homogenic . First introduced to her as a child, serpentwithfeet found a kindred spirit in the eclectic creativity of the Icelandic star. That especially extends to Homogenic , which, thanks to Björk and producer Mark Bell, would mark a hard turn from the more pop-friendly sounds of Post towards a new, baroque, electronic majesty. Our conversation touched...
Aug 30, 2018•42 min•Ep. 49
The Album: Destiny's Child "The Writing's on the Wall" She sings about love and about longing. Hometown heroine and triple threat (singer/songwriter/producer) Tiffany Gouché (Inglewood, CA) sang her way into our playlists with silky smooth vocals and a production style that reminds us of R&B’s glory days in the 90s, mixed with the eclectic futuristic sound LA music has come to be known for. She was therefore the perfect person to talk Destiny’s child platinum smash Heat Rock “The Writing’s O...
Aug 23, 2018•46 min•Ep. 48
The Albums: Alé Kumá: Cantaoras (Alé Kumá, 2002) Mary J. Blige: What's the 411? (Uptown, 1992) The Smiths: Louder Than Bombs (Rough Trade, 1987) Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly (TDE, 2015) We wanted to dedicate an episode to talking about the music of summer, easily the one season that people have the deepest sonic associations with. To that aim, we invited the two founding members of L.A.'s Quetzal , Martha Gonzalvez and Quetzal Flores. Since 1992, the group has melded the son jarocho tradi...
Aug 16, 2018•53 min•Ep. 47
The Album: De La Soul: Three Feet High and Rising (Tommy Boy, 1989) I (OW) mention this on the episode but this album changed my life. It wasn't my introduction to hip-hop but it was the album through which I fell in love with hip-hop and that set me down a path that shaped the rest of my professional (and even personal!) life: as a writer, scholar, DJ and of course, humble podcast host. It clearly had an impact on Thomas Golubic too. Our guest for this episode is one of the top music supervisor...
Aug 09, 2018•48 min•Ep. 46
Los Angeles' underground soul scene is full of talent. The scene's unique blend of soul, jazz, lo-fi, and electronica has helped to bring LA into prominence. Amber Navran is part of the community, first as a member of soul jazz trio Moonchild , and now as a solo artist. Her debut project, Speak Up was released to critical acclaim in 2017 and showcases both her musicianship and her buttery vocals. She joined us to talk about KING, the Grammy-nominated trio whose EP The Story blew them all the way...
Aug 02, 2018•29 min•Ep. 45
Guest: Phil Yu The Album: Boyz II Men: II (1994) Phil Yu is better known to most as Angry Asian Man...except that he isn't actually all that angry (though he is Asian and a man). Phil started his titular site nearly 20 years ago and since then, it has become an indispensable news resource about Asian American culture, politics and related issues. Phil, along with Jeff Yang, also hosts his own Asian American culture podcast, They Call Us Bruce . Phil wanted to revisit one of the big hit albums of...
Jul 26, 2018•47 min•Ep. 44
The Album: The Coup: Steal This Album (1998) Jesse Thorn, host of Bullseye and the MaximumFun podfather, has long been one of our biggest fans and we were delighted to have him come in to talk about one of his favorite albums: The Coup's stellar 1998 Steal This Album. The Coup, by then made up of Boots Riley and DJ Pam the Funkstress, had already established a reputation as one of hip-hop's most outspoken and unapologetically radical groups out there. Their 1993 debut, Kill My Landlord was a rev...
Jul 19, 2018•59 min•Ep. 43
The Album: Prince: Purple Rain (1984) I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray. But when I woke up this morning and realized that Oliver and I spent an hour or so talking with Meshell N'degecello about Prince's seminal "Purple Rain" album, I was beside myself with hype. We spoke about the album's forward thinking musicianship and arrangements, Prince as a visionary, his Messiah-like presence and the extended version of Computer Blue. She told us about keeping "I Would Die 4...
Jul 12, 2018•56 min•Ep. 42
The Song: Francis Scott Key's "Star-Spangled Banner" (1814) For this July 4th week, Morgan and I wanted to do something special and tackle the Great American Heat Rock aka "The Star-Spangled Banner." As Oliver notes during the episode, this is both the oldest song that most Americans know (partly) by heart and the one that we'll hear the most versions of across our lifetimes. Some versions are transcendent. Some are historically groundbreaking. Some are by Fergie. Choose accordingly. More about ...
Jul 05, 2018•50 min•Ep. 41
