WFMU: Michael Shelley: Playlist from November 5, 2011

Artist	Track
Don Norvel & The Visions	Little Latin Lupe Lu
Crazy Birds, The	El Monstruo
Carl Perkins	Baby, I'm Hung On You
Don Covay	Mad Dog Blues
Irene Reid	My Heart Said (The Bossa Nova)
b-52's	Deadbeat Club
Underbeats, The	Foot Stompin'
Geezinslaw Brothers, The	If You Want Me To
Mr. Bear	Radar
David Bowie	Modern Love
Pearl Bailey	Fifteen Years And I'm still Serving Time
Garry Blake	Look Out Now
Roger Miller	You Don't Want My Love
Diana Ross	I'm Coming Out
Chic	Le Freak
Sugarhill Gang	Rapper's Delight
Chic	Good Times
Nile Rodgers	INTERVIEW
SIster Sledge	We Are Family

Listener comments!

Sat. 11/5/11 11:09am Caryn:

Over here, Halloween was on Friday anyway, so you could just pretend you had a European Halloween :)

Sat. 11/5/11 11:19am mrmucho:

can you ask Nile Rodgers if David Byrne sends him royalty checks?

Sat. 11/5/11 11:29am Mike Sin:

Very much looking forward to this Nile Rodgers' interview as I hope to snag his book for my next plane ride.

Sat. 11/5/11 11:29am seang:

this song rules

Sat. 11/5/11 11:32am Caryn:

They just showed an old Bowie concert on tv. This is very good as a live song.

Sat. 11/5/11 11:35am Auriea:

Yep.

Sat. 11/5/11 11:42am mrmucho:

so many people have copped NR's style, but you still know it's him when you hear it. amazing player.

Sat. 11/5/11 11:49am Caryn:

I started loving Le Freak more once I heard the story behind the song in a documentary.

Sat. 11/5/11 11:50am mrmucho:

just lost FM signal!

Sat. 11/5/11 11:51am Mike Sin:

Michael, something's not right with the air signal.

Sat. 11/5/11 11:53am mrmucho:

and we're back

Sat. 11/5/11 11:53am fred:

One funny thing about that Chic song is that it's been a kind of yuppie anthem in France: "freak" sounds just like "fric" which is french for money, so that it comes across as "money is cool". Something Sarkozy could dance to.

Sat. 11/5/11 12:04pm Caryn:

They say Le Freak was originally meant as a giant FU to a specific person. The original idea was that instead of "Freak out!" the shout was "F*** off!" Of course they changed the lyric, but the thought behind it remained. Maybe Nile can verify or deny this story...

Sat. 11/5/11 12:23pm fred:

That only makes the disconnect with the French neo-con more striking. I'm almost tempted to go back to my undercover days and get some of these guys to listen to this interview, and watch their minds melt.
Trouble is they don't speak english that well, so they wouldn't understand how totally wrong they are about this song

Sat. 11/5/11 12:32pm Parq:

Fred, Caryn, when punk started in the UK, it was a desperate lower class spit in the face of the plutocratic establishment. When punk came to the US, spike haircuts in New York cost six or seven times what regular haircuts cost, and Bloomingdales sold gold safety pins. Class consciousness doesn't survive overseas travel very well.

Sat. 11/5/11 12:38pm Peter K.:

Incredible interview!

Sat. 11/5/11 12:38pm fred:

Speaking of spitting, what about all that Che merchandising? There's even a Che cigarette brand over here. When I see those Occupy people with V masks, I wonder where they bought those, and whether it's a sign they have already lost from misunderestimating their enemy

Sat. 11/5/11 12:47pm Caryn:

@Parq: of course the opposite effect is interesting too. Mainly, when a rock or pop song is adopted as a political anthem when it was not one originally. For instance, how Queen's "I Want to Break Free" became a political anthem against dictators in various Central and Southern American countries, and "I Want it All" became an anti-Apartheid anthem in South Africa.

Sat. 11/5/11 12:52pm Parq:

One of the most amazing things is how gay-targeted music goes mainstream. When my daughter was in first grade and we'd take her to "school dances", the dee-jay would play "YMCA." Everyone, parents and kids, would go wild. I'd turn to someone and say "This song is about middle aged chicken hawks picking up teenagers in a public gym -- and we're all okay with this?" The other person would invariably just shrug.

Sat. 11/5/11 12:54pm Drugless Douglas:

I've been listening to and enjoying your interview for about 45 minutes, but I didn't have a freakin' clue who you were talking to until I came to this page.
When you do interviews, consider dropping in a note like "My guest is Nile Rogers" every now 'n' then.
Thanks.

Sat. 11/5/11 12:56pm david:

Awesome # 1 interview Michael - certainly one of your best - Rodgers is a fantastic guest

Sat. 11/5/11 12:57pm Mike Sin:

Man, that Niles Rodgers' interview exceeded my expectations -- great job!

Sat. 11/5/11 12:57pm mrmucho:

excellent interview!

Sat. 11/5/11 12:58pm Caryn:

@Parq: having written papers on the codes the gay subculture has used since the late 1800s/early 1920s and how this communication has evolved while surrounded by mainstream culture, largely being unnoticed, this topic has interested me for a while.
I just read a newspaper columnist talk about his childhood in the countryside when The Village People were big, and about how all the boys at school would argue about which one of them was the cowboy or the construction worker etc. Totally oblivious...

Sat. 11/5/11 1:03pm Caryn:

And of course, a good dance track or song in general can be enjoyed purely musically or as a party anthem if you ignore the lyrics. You can enjoy Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax without constantly thinking that it's about blowjobs, or Sheena Easton's Sugar Walls without thinking that it's a song Prince wrote about her vagina.

Sat. 11/5/11 1:09pm fred:

Which is also interesting from the artist's side: once a song is out, it's no longer fully theirs, and there's no telling what it can grow into. Most often, that's not much or nothing, but it's still something that can weigh on them

Sun. 11/6/11 3:45pm Bob:

Michael,
Your interviews are the best. I never imagined I would be very interested in Nile Rodgers, great job.

Michael Shelley: Playlist from November 5, 2011

Listener comments!

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