Sheesh it's glum out there. Drizzle, sleet, pouring rain, driving winds and a relentless shade of grey. Or as some would say, a perfect day for Record Store Day 2011! What better conditions to foster the annual truffle hunt favored by music fans, record collectors, vinyl enthusiasts and indie hipsters? So as is my want, I bring you my annual tribute to the joy of music, direct from the podcasting bunker of Couderay Music, for the RSD'11 show, "Padcast #29 - Ode To A Mixtape".<< MORE >>

Barely out of the incubator, Wylie, Texas duo, Sayonara spent a weekend at Lilypad recording two singles and an acoustic padcast at the end of February 2011. Featured in The Pad's #28 podcast (which crashes Record Store Day this year with an exclusive sit-down and Skype interview), Sayonara performs Ganesh and unveils the first performance of Bulletproof Tiger. Debbie Pucek and Sean Blythe also talk a little about their sound and collaboration and we play the raw tracking for their first Lilypad single, Discourage Wolf and the unmixed results for the next single, Kidnapped (out this summer).<< MORE >>

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Padcasts #22-25 are video rips so it seemed appropriate to aggregate them. Hope you enjoy my friends from the Chicago band Hollus.<< MORE >>

Jamison and Michael, founding members and principal songwriters of Chicago’s own Hollus, stopped by Sunday (Sept 19, 2010) on The Pad, my little music show podcast that I’ve been known to stream beginning back in 2008. This is their stripped back, acoustic version of Songs That You Loveperformed live here at the ranch. You might recall my flogging of their official music video release for this song a while ago? We had a good time chatting about all things Hollus, Mike’s fondness for “cannonball-ing” (it’s a musical thing, honest!), Jamison’s new HD camera and other matters of music, art and politics.<< MORE >>

Recorded on March 18, 2010 at Chicago's newest performance venue, Lincoln Hall.

A thirty minute set totaling seven songs with six culled from their next album, Hollus, their fourth full-length due out later this year. ... << MORE >>

Over the years, the demo tape for Priceless Innuendo—which Cath kept after the recording sessions ended, and which lived for a while at the bottom of a suitcase after she relocated to Chicago in 1990—attained a kind of mythical status. Did it exist? What did the songs sound like? Would they ever come to light? Miaow fans were tantalized when “Carnal Drag” and “Fear of the Sun” appeared on the When It All Comes Down compilation. Those songs had been pulled ... << MORE >>

Microphones on both sides of the glass lead to a small discussion detailing a few Miaow matters in which Cath Carroll gives listeners a glimpse into her 80s Factory Records band.

Priceless Restoration
A cassette containing demos of the never-was Factory Records album by Miaow, dubbed "Priceless Innuendo" in 1987, is restored and available from Lilypad Records this Valentine's Day here.

Songs include:

• Marry Me Dusty ...

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Over the course of a few weekends in the fall of 1987, Miaow, a British indie band led by singer and songwriter Cath Carroll, holed up in a Victorian building in the South London district of Elephant and Castle to record a set of 8-track demos of songs intended for its debut album on Factory Records. The working title for the album was Priceless Innuendo, a phrase drawn from the broadly slapstick Carry On movies of the 1950s and ’60s, which in turn borrowed their humor from classic English music hall comedy. Listen to When It All Comes Down, a compilation of the band’s singles and radio sessions released in 2003, and you can hear echoes of music hall acts, torch songs, film noir soundtracks, Northern soul, and punk. Cath and the band—bassist Ron Caine, drummer Chris Fenner, and keyboardist Joe Korner —handily drew from a century of English culture, incorporating long-forgotten musical elements into their own unique pop constructions.

“She’s In Our Bed,” (media available here) which Cath describes as “vaudeville-disco,” has a spoken-word rap about a ménage a trois. The Pet Shop Boys would have been proud. -Peter Terzian (liner notes excerpt)<< MORE >>

Cath Carroll’s annual holiday song features her adaptation of the more obscure words to the poem,
‘A Visit from St Nicholas’ by Clement Clark Moore (1823).

Wishing you & yours the happiest of holidays!
Cath & Kerry | Lilypad Records

Visit from St. Nicholas
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer
With a little old driver, so lively and ... << MORE >>