Monolith Cocktail Blog

2023’s Inaugural Social Playlist
Anniversary Albums And Deaths Marked Alongside An Eclectic Mix Of Cross-Generational Music, Newish Tunes And Surprises.

Just give me two hours of your precious time to expose you to some of the most magical, incredible, eclectic and freakish music that’s somehow been missed, or not even picked up on the radar. For the Social is my uninterrupted radio show flow of carefully curated music; marking anniversary albums and, sadly, deaths, but also sharing my own favourite discoveries over the decades and a number of new(ish) tracks missed or left out of the blog’s Monthly playlists.

In the anniversary category there’s 50^th celebrating LPs from Vangelis (1973’s Earth album), Popol Vuh (the divine styling Seligpreisung), Sparks (A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing), Judy Collins (True Stories And Other Dreams album with Mark Abramson), Bruce Springsteen (Greetings From Ashbury Park, N.J.), Ellen Mcllwaine (We The People) and The Beach Boys (Holland). A lot of debuts in amongst that lot, in what was an incredible month and year for music. As it happens The Beach Boys cover that period, that pilgrim’s album, on their latest yearly box set reprise, Sail On Sailor 1972, from which I’ve also sprinkled a couple of previously unreleased and live nuggets – ‘Body Talk – Grease Job’, ‘Gimmie Some Lovin’/I Need Your Love’ and the poetic demo try-out ‘The Road Not Taken’.

Standing alone in representing 1993 – unbelievably, from where I’m standing, thirty bloody years ago) – I’ve added a tune from The The’s Dusk LP to this mix.

And so in marking the legacy of those we’ve lost over the Christmas period and a little before, I’ve included tributes to the late great idiosyncratic and moody Terry Hall and Kosmische/Krautrock leviathan Manuel Göttsching – of Ash Ra and soloist cosmological and techno music progenitor fame. As a cheeky aside, there’s also one of the late mischievous wind-up merchants, critic and Private Eye contributor, Victor Lewis-Smith’s phone call time wasting operations to smirk or have a laugh at. 

In what is one of the most welcome moves of late, the back catalogue of Tiger has been unleashed on Spotify. Possibly one of the UK’s most important and best bands of the 90s – I followed them around for a number of years from Festival to gig, bought all the painted 7” singles, and basically built a shrine to their unwavering (YBAs) art pop drone form of mullet haired audacity – Tiger more or less vanished from the scene after only two albums and smattering of singles. Such is my fandom I’ve been greedy and included three of their tracks: ‘Where’s The Love?’ from the B Sides gathering, ‘Ray Travez’ from the band’s debut long player We Are Puppets – of which my vinyl version ended up as a skinning-up mat when I lent it to one of my fellow art school pals – and ‘River’ from the second album, Rosaria. I hope it revives some interest and joy in rediscovering such an important idiosyncratic band.  

A healthy inclusion of New(ish) tracks from the backend of 2022, and some much earlier ones, can be found on this year’s first Social playlist. Choice tracks from Sven Wunder, Orchestra Gold, Sun’s Signature, Årabot, June McDoom, Lion’s Drum, Your Old Droog, Sentidor, Noori & His Dorpa Band and a track from the multimedia Meditations On Crime’s recent collaborative album with a host of freaks, enlightened troopers and such, ‘We The People Of The Myths’ with King Khan and Marshall Allen’s led incarnation of the Sun Ra Arkestra.

TRACK LIST IN FULL::

Vangelis  ‘Let It Happen’
Sven Wunder  ‘Sun Kissed’
Idris Muhammad  ‘Brother You Know You’re Doing Wrong’
The Beach Boys  ‘Body Talk- Grease Job’
Noori & His Dorpa Band  ‘Saagama’
Orchestra Gold  ‘Keleya’
El Molino  ‘Moliendo Parches’
Fun Boy Three  ‘The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)’
Masonic Wonders  ‘I Call Him’
Tony Williams  ‘There Comes A Time’
Büdi Und Gumls/Lion’s Drum  ‘Tanz Der Korperlinge – the Lion’s Drum Edit’
Little Albert  ‘Reclaim Myself’
Tiger  ‘Where’s The Love?’
Årabot ‘Green Fire’
Ashra  ‘Deep Distance’
The Sunshine Fix  ‘Future History And The Irrelevance Of Time’
Popol Vuh  ‘Selig sind die, die da hungern’
Sentidor ‘Sonho Das Flores’
Sparks  ‘Do-Re-Mi’
Tiger  ‘River’
Rema-Rema  ‘Feedback Song’
Major Organ and the Adding Machine  ‘Life Form (Transmission Received)’
Your Old Droog  ‘Fela Kuti’
Tiger  ‘Ray Travez’
The The  ‘This Is The Night’
Judy Collins & Mark Abramson  ‘So Begins The Task’
The Beach Boys  ‘Gimme Some Lovin’/I Need Your Love – Medley’
Ellen Mcllwaine  ‘Ain’t No Two Ways To It (It’s Love)’
The Specials  ‘Maggie’s Farm’
The Beach Boys  ‘Leaving This Town’ Bill Fey  ‘I Hear You Calling’
Bruce Springsteen  ‘It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City’
June McDoom  ‘Babe, You Light Me Up’
Sun’s Signature  ‘Underwater’
Michael Hoenig & Manuel Göttsching  ‘Early Water – Part 1’
The Beach Boys  ‘The Road Not Taken – Demo’
Victor Lewis Smith  ‘Cubism Crisis’
Meditations On Crime w/ King Khan, Marshall Allen and the Sun Ra Arkestra  ‘We The People Of The Myths’

Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.