Eclectic Grooves

It is once again time for me to reach back in the refrigerator for some "choice cuts". Each time, I will be featuring sizzling and succulent morsels that are grabbing my ear right now that range from funk to country, from afro-beat to garage rock, etc. Sometimes there will be a theme to these songs that ties them all together in a nice bow, but other times the songs featured will just be a musical hodgepodge of eclectic delights. Without further ado, lets see what "choice cuts" the vinyl butcher has prepared for us today. Luther Allison- Bloomington Closing- Early Version #1 (Bonus track from CD Reissue) From: Luther's Blues [Motown, 2001] As I was shuffling through CD's to play in my car the other day, I stumbled upon this Luther Allison reissue from 2001. Back when I was working at Music Millennium, I was turned on to countless blues artists by Bill Rhoades, the resident blues expert and finest harmonica play...

I can remember a time when Portland's sole representation of community radio was KBOO. While KBOO still featured a few interesting musically curated shows in the first part of 00's, it began to slowly but surely eschew music shows to make way for more politically-minded talk radio shows around the middle of the decade. Recognizing that there was a serious void to be filled, an innovative community radio station named XRAY fm debuted on the airwaves in the Spring of 2014, promising to focus on free-form music shows that would challenge the current status quo of radio.  One of the unique things about XRAY was that it would be available not only to locals in Portland via FM radio, but streaming on its website xray.fm to the entire world. Another way that XRAY got the jump on the aforementioned KBOO was to archive a couple of their shows to be available to listeners on-demand, alleviating the need to be listening to the broadcast while it happens.  Consid...