Discord & Rhyme are taking a trip to Canterbury, England - UNESCO World Heritage Site, home of the Canterbury Cathedral, and birthplace of prog-rock legends Caravan. Springing forth from the rich Canterbury scene, Caravan created a style of progressive rock that managed to be complex while retaining a real sense of warmth. The group is not particularly well known outside of progressive rock circles, but Phil has loved them for a long time, and he’s excited to talk about the group’s most famous album, In The Land Of Grey And Pink.
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Discord & Rhyme goes to the movies! This Halloween we're ringing in spooky season by exploring the work of filmmaker and musician John Carpenter. Best known for introducing the world to Michael Myers with the horror classic Halloween, Carpenter has built a solid filmography as a director while also providing his own distinctive musical vision with his scores. The 2017 career-spanning collection Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998 features fresh recordings of some of his most recognizable and beloved soundtrack work. Join Dan, Mike, and Rich as they slightly drift from the usual Discord & Rhyme format to indulge their movie nerd obsessions.
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Mike’s ongoing quest to make Discord & Rhyme more metal inevitably meant we would have to tackle the band so synonymous with metal they put it in their name, and Metallica’s incredible mid-80s prime inevitably meant we would need to tackle two of their albums in the same episode. Ride the Lightning of 1984 and Master of Puppets of 1986 are largely the same album in terms of overall flow, but the differences are every bit as important as the similarities, and the best material from these albums ranks among the best rock music (not just metal) ever created. Join with Mike, Phil, and John as they make the case for why Metallica, despite a career with its fair share of ups and downs (and baffling documentaries), should be remembered as one of the greatest bands of its time.
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Here we go, yo! It's been a while since this podcast has covered either a hip-hop album or a jazz album — so this week, we're doing both at once! A Tribe Called Quest formed in the late ‘80s in the New York City neighborhood of St. Albans, Queens, which was home to some of the giants of jazz, blues, and funk, and was a hotbed of musical activity in the years when hip-hop was simmering into existence. On Tribe’s 1991 album The Low End Theory, members Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali Shaheed Muhammed pay tribute to this rich musical legacy with an album that charted a new path for hip-hop by exploring its roots in bebop, hard bop, post-bop, all the other bops, and more. This album isn’t just a classic – it’s one of the sacred texts of the hip-hop genre, and it helped Rich get into jazz after years of failed attempts. So if you’re a jazz aficionado who’s on the fence about hip-hop, or vice versa, we invite you to crank up the bass and check the (discord and) rhime with us. Just watch out for the dungeon dragon!
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Jeff Beck had shown off his guitar genius with several fiery mid-1960s hit singles by the Yardbirds; he’d even scored some UK top-30 hits as an unlikely singing star. But all that was prologue to Truth, his 1968 solo debut album. Joined by future Rolling Stone Ron Wood and a then-unknown Rod Stewart, Beck laid down a standout batch of electric blues songs - plus a showtune and an olde English folk song to show off his versatility. Truth has always been one of Ben’s favorite albums, and he joins Rich and Dan to talk about it.
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Before they were flattened into part of the public’s collective generic memory of the 1960s, and before an astonishing level of in-fighting and tragedy turned the group’s story into one of the bestVH1: Behind the Music episodes, The Mamas and the Papas released one of the best debut albums of the 1960s. It produced three massive hits you’ve heard hundreds of times a piece if you listen to oldies radio, but it also produced a handful of worthwhile deeper cuts, with interesting songwriting (most of the time) and top-notch singing throughout. John leads a discussion with Amanda, Phil, and Ben about the collection of musicians who created one of his favorite 1960s albums and one of the most jaw-dropping soap-operas of the decade.
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Hello, Cleveland! This week, Producer Mike continues his quest to make Discord & Rhyme more metal by turning it up to 11 with an episode on England’s loudest band, Spinal Tap. The fictional Spinal Tap consists of guitarists David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel, bassist Derek Smalls, and a series of cursed drummers, whose misadventures are chronicled in the 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. The real Spinal Tap consists of Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer, three exceptionally gifted comedians who know what makes metal tick and are very smart at playing dumb. And that extends to the movie’s soundtrack, whose songs walk the line between sophisticated songwriting and sounding like they could conceivably have been written by three boneheads. Because why waste good music on a brain?
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George Harrison was heading toward his creative peak in the late 1960s, but famously had a difficult time getting the other Beatles interested in recording his songs. So when they broke up in 1970, George got a massive group of musicians together and recorded his entire backlog to release all at once. All Things Must Pass was the first ever triple album by a single artist, and (apart from Apple Jam) is a tightly focused, intense, cathartic listening experience unmatched in popular music. In this episode, Amanda, Ben, and Mike do their best to dissect this extremely dense album and prove that George Harrison was a brilliant musician and deserves the highest respect.
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In the early 1970s, Jonathan Richman assembled a band that recorded a groundbreaking set of songs fusing garage-rock sensibilities with his own entirely unique worldview. Unfortunately, before The Modern Lovers managed to complete a proper album, Richman’s musical interests drifted into an entirely different direction, ultimately leading to the dissolution of this version of the band. The collection of recordings that finally saw release as 1976’s The Modern Lovers stands as a snapshot of a band at a specific moment in time and has served as an endless source of inspiration for punk and indie artists ever since. Take a spin past the Stop and Shop and join us with the radio on for a chat about this groundbreaking classic.
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In the early 1970s, Jonathan Richman assembled a band that recorded a groundbreaking set of songs fusing garage-rock sensibilities with his own entirely unique worldview. Unfortunately, before The Modern Lovers managed to complete a proper album, Richman’s musical interests drifted into an entirely different direction, ultimately leading to the dissolution of this version of the band. The collection of recordings that finally saw release as 1976’s The Modern Lovers stands as a snapshot of a band at a specific moment in time and has served as an endless source of inspiration for punk and indie artists ever since. Take a spin past the Stop and Shop and join us with the radio on for a chat about this groundbreaking classic.
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