Every single person I’ve talked to has listed Henry Rollins DJ set as  a highlight of KCRW’s Halloween Ball Masquerade. While a full review and tons of photos will follow, here is a peek at Henry’s set list to see what all the fuss was about:
(and yes, that’s the superman costume he wore in the Rollins Band video for “Liar“!)
Bernard Hermann – The Murder / Psycho Soundtrack
James Brown - Intro/ It’s A New Day (So Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn / Revolution Of The Mind
Black Flag – …

DJ Tom Schnabel will air a live performance with Ryuichi Sakamoto on KCRW this Sunday, October 31 at 1pm. Tom also interviewed the Academy Award-winning Japanese composer about his love for John Cage, Toru Takemitsu, his fame, and his latest two-CD set, “Playing the Piano and Out of Noise.”  Ryuichi plays a sold out show presented by KCRW at the El Rey Theatre on Friday 5, 2010.
Find the live session and interview here in the archives after it airs.
RR

All of our DJs receive hundreds of CDs a month to consider for airplay. In this regular feature, KCRW DJ Chuck P catalogues his musical bounty from the Post Office each week.
Racing toward the holiday season now. The three month flurry of festive colors and warmed cockles.  Music usually dries up at the end of the year, but I got a few gems this week I wanted to share.

1) Weekend – “Sports” .. it’s from Slumberland Records.  We push their stuff to the top of the pile.  It’s …

Just in time for KCRW’s Halloween bash Masquerade, UK rockers The Duke Spirit have released a video for their awesome new single “Everybody’s Under Your Spell,” from the forthcoming “Kusama” EP. The band will be debuting new songs and old favorites tomorrow night for KCRW’s costume ball and, after watching this video of mostly live performance footage, I’m getting really excited!
Oh, and as of this posting tickets are almost sold out so get them while you can!
RR

– from Jeff Miller, Thrillist LA Editor
Few bands are as uncooly-cool as The Henry Clay People, the five-piece darlings of the Silverlake scene who for the past few years have become popular precisely by rallying against everything that scene stands for, embracing sloppy, drunken messiness over hipster cred and evoking an all-for-one mantra that often finds their shows ending in an all-out covers set, with the audience on stage and the band in the crowd singing “Proud Mary,” or “Born in the USA,” or “American Girl.” That’s not to …

KCRW’s TOP 50 Most Played Albums for the Week of 10/25/2010
1 FERRY, BRYAN == Olympia >> [Astralwerks]
2 MAXIMUM BALLOON == Maximum Balloon >> [Dgc/interscope]
3 CFCF == River >> [Rvng]
4 DUKE SPIRIT == Kusama Ep >> [Shangri-la Music]
5 RADIO CITIZEN == Hope & Despair >> [Ubiquity]
6 EL GUINCHO == Pop Negro >> [Young Turks]
7 BELLE & SEBASTIAN == Write About Love >> [Matador]
8 RONSON, MARK & THE BUSINESS INTL == Record Collection >> [Rca]
9 JUNIP == Fields >> [Mute]
10 UNDERWORLD == Barking >> [Om]
11 BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE == Forgiveness Rock Record …

This past weekend, over a thousand artists flooded NYC for the CMJ Music Marathon. The annual event is always a great place to find bands on the rise and Erica Shultz, a former KCRW volunteer, sends us this report from the East Coast:
Sydney, Australia’s The Jezabels shined at the Planetary Group/Future Sounds Party at Pianos during the CMJ music festival in New York City this past weekend. Vocalist Hayley Mary’s dynamic range with added reverb creates ethereal melodies over mid-tempo pop/rock. Mary’s stage presence is humble yet captivating and her …

– From Anthony Valadez
Audio/Visual: Reworked, Recycled and Remixed is a remix album of my release last year on Philly indie label Recordbreakin’ Music. We combined some great remixes from some wonderful talent across the states to give their respective take on the original material, which allowed each track to take on a whole new life. I also wanted to include a few demo versions that did not make the album but that were personally special to me.
One of the standout tracks is “Letter To A Newborn” which is mainly …

KCRW was the first to play the Secret Sisters’ music and the lovely ladies from Muscle Shoals, Alabama thanked us this morning with a gorgeous set of songs – mostly sweet, sad tunes with the most perfect harmonies imaginable. It was like honey in your ears! Or, as recording engineer Ray Guarna puts it, “morning becomes innocent.”
After playing a few sad songs in a row, Laura Rogers dedicated a song to her family called “All About You” and told the audience if that song “doesn’t make you happy, you don’t …

My love for this band is well documented on this blog and among anyone I’ve talked to about music in the last couple of years. Local Natives’ full length debut “Gorilla Manor” was on my top 10 best albums list of last year and I’m tempted to put them on it again for 2010. I truly can’t stop listening to it.
And now, after touring their bums off across the world, they finally released a video for one of my favorite songs, “Who Know Who Cares.”  Their harmonies give me goosebumps …