My friends Susan and Julie are on the road, taking separate road trips. Susan appears to be on her way to a new life in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Julie is traveling with her girls from Boston to Niagara Falls and back (they actually live in SCA, but are visiting Grandma in Boston). Music, in my mind, is an integral part of any road trip. Meat Loaf and Paradise by the Dashboard Light used to figure prominently in many of my youthful asphalt excursions. So this week, June 25th, Happy Feet Radio is ready to burn up the road on WOOL-LP FM, 100.1 on the radio dial, and world wide on the internet, www.wool.fm.

6/25/11:  Another One for the Road (more…)

Happy Feet Radio 6/11/11

The Flatlanders, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Joe Ely

The Flatlanders came out of Lubbock, Texas back in the early 70′s.  Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock were all buddies having met separately at different times in their lives.  Gilmore had been recording and playing in bands since the mid sixties.  Ely was something of a musical gypsy, traveling throughout the US and Europe on a shoestring.  Hancock was becoming a jack of all trades.  In 1970, they all coincidentally moved back to Lubbock and sort of fell together, living in the same house and playing lots of music.  They spent a lot of time singing together, writing songs, and finally got it together enough to record an album in Nashville in 1971.  It was an inauspicious time for a group of acoustic country-rockers to release an album.  Country was on its way to boring itself to death.  The smooth countrypolitan sound held sway with listeners and country radio programmers.  Needless to say, that first Flatlanders collection sank like a stone and the band broke up. (more…)

6/4/11: 2 of LA’s Finest: Los Lobos and Dave Alvin will be gracing the airwaves (and the internet) on the next installment of the Happy Feet Radio Show.  Being born  in the early to mid 1950′s members of Los Lobos and Dave Alvin did not get to participate in the birth of rock and roll.  But, as they grew up in East LA (most of LL) and Downey (all of DA) they vacuumed up all those early influences producing in the late seventies and early 80s some seminal LA roots rock music.

Los Lobos produced ….And a Time to Dance on Slash in 1983 after two barely noticed collections of Mexican traditional music.  Melding the sound and beauty of the Mexican musical tradition with the energy of early rock and roll,  Los Lobos blew the doors off of many dancehalls all over LA, but especially on their home ground of East LA.  Since that time Los Lobos has gone onto, well not exactly riches, but definitely fame, playing great music, some of it still in the early mode, but much more of it in more diverse, and often, experimental territory.  Unusual for a band of its longevity, the band’s member roster remains the same, giving credence to the advice, accept no substitutions. (more…)